Astronaut Matthew Dominick (center) poses with cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko (left) and Flight Engineer Nikolai Chub (right) while preparing Orlan spacesuits for a spacewalk. The Expedition 71 crew is getting ready for a spacewalk on Thursday while finishing payload operations inside a U.S. cargo craft before its return to Earth. The International Space Station residents also investigated antibiotic resistance and participated in a cardiorespiratory study on Wednesday. Two cosmonauts will exit the orbital outpost’s Poisk airlock at 10:55 a.m. EDT on Thursday for a planned seven-hour spacewalk. Sta ..read more

NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick and Tracy C. Dyson both pose for a fun portrait as Dominick tests portable breathing gear. Payload operations are underway aboard the International Space Station as a U.S. cargo craft prepares for its return to Earth at the end of the week. Meanwhile, the Expedition 71 crew continued researching neuroscience and getting ready for the year’s first spacewalk. The four NASA astronauts in the orbital outpost’s U.S. segment spent the first half of their day packing the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft with science cargo for analysis back on Earth. Flight Engineers Tracy C ..read more

The official crew portrait for NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test. Left is Suni Williams, who will serve as the pilot, and to the right is Barry “Butch” Wilmore, spacecraft commander. Photo credit: NASA NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who are set to launch to the International Space Station on Monday, May 6, entered pre-flight quarantine in preparation for the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test mission. Flight crew health stabilization is a standard process ahead of any human spaceflight mission to ensure the health and safety of the crew prior to liftoff, as well as prevent sicknes ..read more

Astronaut Mike Barratt processes brain organoid samples inside the BioServe Tissue Chamber to learn how microgravity affects the central nervous system. The Expedition 71 crew kicked off a busy schedule on Monday exploring ways to treat neurological diseases while gearing up for a spacewalk planned for Thursday. Cargo operations are also picking up as a U.S. cargo craft gets ready for its departure from the International Space Station. Researchers use the orbital outpost’s weightless environment to gain insights impossible to achieve on Earth’s surface. Results extrapolated from the space inve ..read more

Cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko inspects the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft during a spacewalk on Dec. 11, 2018. Biomedical duties to understand how space affects the human body and develop ways to treat microgravity-induced conditions were the prime research objectives for the Expedition 71 crew on Friday. The orbital residents also continued loading a U.S. cargo craft for its upcoming departure and preparing for a spacewalk at the International Space Station. Living long-term in the weightlessness environment creates fluid shifts and blood pressure issues that doctors seek to address and promote crew healt ..read more

Cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko is pictured during a spacewalk on Dec. 11, 2018, to inspect the Soyuz MS-09 crew ship. The Expedition 71 crew had its hands full on Thursday with a multitude of research activities filling the schedule. The orbital septet also continued gearing up for next week’s spacewalk amidst ongoing cargo operations aboard the International Space Station. Advanced space science is continually taking place aboard the orbital outpost with the experiments being run by astronauts, remotely controlled by researchers on the ground, or autonomously operated. The equipment housing and pow ..read more

Astronaut MIke Barratt installs a small satellite orbital deployer inside the Kibo laboratory module’s airlock. Cargo operations and spacewalks preparations topped the schedule aboard the International Space Station on Wednesday. The Expedition 71 crew members also worked on biomedical research and reviewed procedures for a simulated emergency. NASA astronauts Tracy C. Dyson and Mike Barratt kicked off their day swapping cargo in and out of the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft that arrived at the orbital outpost on March 23. Afterward, NASA Flight Engineers Matthew Dominick and Jeanette Epps too ..read more

Astronaut Jeanette Epps smiles for a portrait after she finished conducting a HAM radio session with Italian students. The Expedition 71 crew members continued ongoing biology and physics research, as well as spacewalk preparations on Tuesday. The seven International Space Station residents also kept up more CubeSat work, cargo operations, and lab maintenance throughout their shifts. Eye checks were on the schedule Tuesday as NASA Flight Engineers Tracy C. Dyson and Mike Barratt contributed to the CIPHER human research study. The duo participated in a pair of eye exams looking at the retina an ..read more

In March 2021, NASA ground controllers used the International Space Station’s robotic arm to release a cargo pallet containing aging nickel hydride batteries from the space station following the delivery and installation of new lithium-ion batteries as part of power upgrades on the orbital outpost. The total mass of the hardware released from space station was about 5,800 pounds. The hardware was expected to fully burn up during entry through Earth’s atmosphere on March 8, 2024. However, a piece of hardware survived re-entry and impacted a home in Naples, Florida. NASA collected the item in co ..read more

The official Expedition 71 crew portrait with (bottom row from left) Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin and NASA astronauts Mike Barratt, Matthew Dominick, and Jeanette Epps. In the back row (from left) are, NASA astronaut Tracy C. Dyson and Roscosmos cosmonauts Nikolai Chub and Oleg Kononenko. Spacesuits and space physics kicked off the work week for the Expedition 71 crew. The International Space Station residents also continued their ongoing human research activities and cargo operations. NASA astronauts Mike Barratt and Matthew Dominick took turns on Monday servicing a pair of U.S. sp ..read more