Dragon Operations Continue During Stem Cell Research on Station
The Expedition 72 crew continued working inside the two SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked to the International Space Station on Friday. The orbital residents also kept up stem cell research, serviced a pair of spacesuits, and maintained life support systems at the end of the week.
Three NASA astronauts and one Roscosmos cosmonaut representing NASA's SpaceX Crew-8 are nearing the end of a seven-month mission and are waiting for NASA and SpaceX to announce their return to Earth time and date, pending weather. Dragon Endeavour Commander Matthew Dominick is poised to lead Pilot Mike Barratt with Mission Specialists Jeanette Epps and Alexander Grebenkin back to Earth inside Dragon with a splashdown off the coast of Florida. The quartet has been packing cargo and personal items inside the spacecraft for several days and spent the end of the day Friday reviewing emergency equipment.
The space station's two newest crew members, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, joined Expedition 72 Commander Suni Williams and Flight Engineer Butch Wilmore inside Dragon Freedom and trained the duo on Dragon operations. Hague also worked with Barratt and NASA Flight Engineer Don Pettit inside Freedom configuring its seats for docked operations.
Stem cell research has been underway aboard the orbital outpost this week using the microgravity environment to learn how to produce advanced cell-based therapies and treat certain blood diseases and cancers. Williams and Epps partnered together processing stem cell samples and peering at them with through a microscope. Researchers are exploring how weightlessness enables stem cells to produce blood and immune cells with superior attributes than those created on Earth.
Wilmore spent his day in the Quest airlock servicing a pair of U.S. spacesuits. The veteran NASA astronaut swapped out components and cleaned cooling loops inside the suits as part of regularly scheduled maintenance.
Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, who have been aboard the orbital lab with Pettit since Sept. 11, split their day with computer maintenance and life support operations. They also joined Gorbunov and recorded a video for educators and students on Earth. Grebenkin inventoried medical gear and tested power supply systems in the Nauka science module.
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