Spacewalk Prep Continues for Crew on Monday
Spacewalk preparations topped the Expedition 70 crew members? schedule today as two Roscosmos cosmonauts gear up to exit the station on Wednesday, Oct. 25, and two NASA astronauts look ahead to their first spacewalk next week. Flight Engineers Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub will venture outside of the International Space Station?s Poisk module at 2:10 p.m. EDT on Wednesday to install communications hardware, deploy a nanosatellite, and inspect the external backup radiator that experienced a coolant leak. The duo worked together today prepping tools they?ll use during their seven-hour excursion and installing lights and video cameras to the helmets of the Orlan suits they will don. NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O?Hara worked in tandem today as they prepare for their first spacewalk next week. The duo will exit the station on Monday at 8:05 a.m. to remove the Radio Frequency Group?an electronics box?and replace bearing assemblies on a solar array rotary joint. Today, their prep was geared towards procedure reviews and will continue to ramp up throughout the rest of the week. Later in the evening, they were joined by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Flight Engineer Satoshi Furukawa and ESA (European Space Agency) Commander Andreas Mogensen for a conference with grounds teams. Last month, the final round of Arabidopsis plants was harvested from Plant Habitat-03, an investigation that aims to help researchers understand how adaptations in one generation of plants could transfer to the next, given the environmental stress of microgravity. Today, Mogensen cleaned the facility and prepped Seed Bags for future return to Earth. Meanwhile, Furukawa removed and replaced the filter assembly on an orbital system that processes wastewater. While most of the station residents focused on prep and procedure reviews for the upcoming spacewalks, Roscosmos Flight Engineer Konstantin Borisov completed maintenance tasks and conducted an experiment that assesses the glow of Earth?s atmosphere at night in near ultraviolet.
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