Station Preps for Crew Swap and Continues Space Health Studies

An aurora streams across Earth’s horizon in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited off the coast of southeast Australia. At bottom, a portion of the station’s U.S. segment is illuminated including the SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft docked to the Harmony module’s forward port. NASA

The Expedition 73 crew is preparing to split up in early August while another crew on the ground is beginning final preparations for a launch to the International Space Station next week. Meanwhile, the orbital residents continue their human research activities, space exercise studies, and lab maintenance duties on Wednesday.

NASA Flight Engineer Anne McClain kicked off her shift packing personal items and cargo inside the SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft she will ride back to Earth with Nichole Ayers of NASA, Takuya Onishi of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), and Kirill Peskov of Roscosmos. The four crewmates representing NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission have been gathering crew provisions for a couple of weeks for loading aboard Dragon preparing to end a space research mission that began on March 14. They will gather at 10:40 a.m. EDT on Friday for a news conference and discuss their upcoming departure live on YouTube.

Waiting on Earth to replace Crew-10 is NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 mission with Commander Zena Cardman and Pilot Mike Fincke, both from NASA, and Mission Specialists Kimiya Yui of JAXA and Oleg Platonov of Roscosmos. The Commercial Crew quartet is due to depart NASA’s Johnson Space Center on Saturday and arrive at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to begin their countdown to a launch inside Dragon atop the Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than 12:09 p.m. EDT on Thursday, July 31.

NASA Flight Engineer Jonny Kim, on Wednesday, practiced on a computer the procedures he will use while monitoring Dragon’s rendezvous and approach with Crew-11 onboard. Dragon will automatically dock to the Harmony module’s space-facing port about a day-and-a-half after launch, the crew will enter the orbital outpost, and begin a seven-month research mission in low Earth orbit.

After her packing job, McClain focused on human research measuring her blood pressure, attaching electrodes to herself, and swapping out a sensor-packed headband and vest to comfortably measure her health data. Ayers continued packing items for return home, relocated genetic research gear, and serviced hardware that measures the vibrations caused by crew activities and orbital maneuvers that affect experiments on the station.

Station Commander Onishi began his shift on Wednesday activating and calibrating specialized video hardware that would track his movements later as he worked out on the advanced resistive exercise device (ARED). The data collected from the ARED Kinematics study helps researchers understand how exercising in microgravity affects the human body, protect muscles and bones from exercise loads on the equipment, and adjust workout plans for individual crew members to maintain maximum fitness.

Peskov continued testing the experimental lower body negative pressure suit that may help crews adjust quicker to the return to Earth’s gravity. Flight Engineer Alexey Zubritskiy assisted Peskov as he tried on the suit that pulls fluids from the upper body potentially counteracting space-caused head and eye pressure.

Zubritskiy later joined veteran cosmonaut and Flight Engineer Sergey Ryzhikov and set up biomedical hardware they will use to monitor how microgravity affects the digestion process after eating their breakfast on Thursday. Earlier, Ryzhikov set up hardware to image in Earth multiple wavelengths then serviced a pair of oxygen generators in the Zvezda and Nauka modules.

Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station on X, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

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