Cargo, Science, and Spacewalk Preps Fill Station’s Day

The first rays of an orbital sunrise reflect off the International Space Station's roll-out solar arrays that overshadow and augment the orbital outpost's main solar arrays.

Six NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station had a day filled with cargo packing, orbital plumbing, and a spacewalk conference. The orbital outpost's three cosmonauts from Roscosmos spent their day testing a 3D printer, collecting microbial air samples, and servicing life support gear.

Expedition 71 Flight Engineers Tracy C. Dyson, Mike Barratt, Matthew Dominick, and Jeanette Epps worked throughout Wednesday packing trash and discarded cargo inside Northrop Grumman's Cygnus cargo space freighter. Cygnus is targeted to complete a five-and-a-half-month mission in mid-July and depart the station's Unity module before descending into Earth's atmosphere for a fiery, but safe disposal above the South Pacific Ocean.

In the midst of the cargo work, Dominick videotaped the location of station hardware stowed in the starboard side of the Columbus laboratory module. Epps swapped sample cartridges inside the Materials Science Laboratory, a research furnace that safely exposes metals, alloys, polymers, and other materials to high temperatures to discover new applications for Earth and space industries. Dyson and Barratt continued spacesuit and tool configurations in the Quest airlock.

At the end of the workday, the four NASA astronauts gathered in the Destiny laboratory module for a video conference with mission controllers on the ground. The quartet called down to the NASA engineers and discussed procedures and readiness for an upcoming spacewalk.

NASA's Boeing Crew Flight Test astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams started their morning with exercise sessions before organizing cargo packed inside the Permanent Multipurpose Module. The duo then spent the afternoon working to remove and replace a failed pressure control and pump assembly module that is part of the Tranquility module's bathroom, or waste and hygiene compartment.

Station Commander Oleg Kononenko from Roscosmos spent all day Wednesday testing a 3D printer and its ability to manufacture space hardware on demand. Flight Engineer Nikolai Chub spent half his day servicing plumbing hardware in the Nauka science module before working out on the advanced resistive exercise device and jogging on a treadmill during the afternoon. Flight Engineer Alexander Grebenkin's list of duties included collecting more microbial air samples for analysis and maintaining electronics systems.

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

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