Preparations Underway for Upcoming Cargo Delivery
The Expedition 69 crew is gearing up for a cargo delivery to the International Space Station this week. Health investigations and spacesuit surveys were also conducted today. NASA astronauts Woody Hoburg and Frank Rubio spent most of their day preparing for Friday?s capture of Northrop Grumman?s Cygnus spacecraft. The duo completed another robotics practice session of Cygnus berthing and capture in the morning, followed by a practice of grapple procedures in the Cupola using the station?s robotic arm, Canadarm2, in the afternoon. Cygnus is targeted to launch tomorrow, Aug. 1 from NASA?s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, carrying more than 8,200 pounds of supplies and science to the station. On Friday, Aug. 4, Hoburg will capture Cygnus using Canadarm2, and Rubio will act as backup, marking Northrop Grumman?s 19th commercial resupply mission. Near the end of the day, Rubio consolidated food supplies in preparation for Cygnus?s arrival. Meanwhile, Hoburg verified the battery power of jetpacks attached to spacesuits. The jetpacks, also known as SAFERs (Simplified Aid for EVA Rescue), provide astronauts the ability to maneuver back to the station in the unlikely event they became untethered during a spacewalk. UAE (United Arab Emirates) Flight Engineer Sultan Alneyadi completed orbital plumbing tasks in the morning. He then moved into the Harmony module to prep for Friday?s space freighter capture and ended his day setting up the Berthing Camera System in the Unity module. NASA astronaut Stephen Bowen conducted Immunity Assay operations, an ongoing investigation that aims to monitor the impact of spaceflight stressors on cellular immune functions. The three cosmonauts, Commander Sergey Prokopyev and Flight Engineers Dmitri Petelin and Andrey Fedyaev, all prepared for an upcoming Russian spacewalk on Aug. 9.
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