Crew Works on Biomedicine, Spacesuits Day Before Swapping Commanders
The Expedition 74 crew is wrapping up its final weekend together with biomedical checks, spacesuit cleaning, and cargo packing inside the Soyuz MS-28 crew spacecraft. The orbital residents will swap commanders on Saturday the day before three crewmates depart the International Space Station for a ride back to Earth.
Blood sample processing and vein scans were the main scientific activities aboard the orbital outpost on Friday. Doctors are continuously collecting crew biomedical data to help astronauts stay healthy while living and working long-term in space. The unique insights are only possible in microgravity and also have the potential to advance health on Earth.
NASA flight engineer Anil Menon was back on cell immunity research spinning crew blood samples in a centrifuge then stowing them in a science freezer for preservation and later analysis. Doctors will examine the samples to monitor crew health and cellular immune function for the Immunity Assay investigation.
NASA flight engineer Jessica Meir took her turn as crew medical officer and operated the Ultrasound 3 device to scan the veins of flight engineers Sophie Adenot of ESA (European Space Agency) and Andrey Fedyaev of Roscosmos. NASA flight engineer Chris Williams then took over from Meir and scanned her veins with the Ultrasound 3 as part of his final duties aboard the space station.
NASA flight engineer Jack Hathway spent his shift inside the Quest airlock cleaning a pair of spacesuits. Hathaway first cleaned the water-cooling loops that keep the suit’s temperature stable during a spacewalk. Then he checked the spacesuits for operability before refilling their tanks and liquid cooling ventilation garments with water.
Roscosmos flight engineers Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina are still continuing lab orientation activities as they adapt to weightlessness and learn new technical skills. Dubrov also checked the Elektron oxygen generator’s external tanks for water and air bubbles. Kikina assisted cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev as they tested the lower body negative pressure suit that may ease the duo’s adjustment to gravity after returning to Earth on Sunday.
Kud-Sverchkov will hand over command of the orbital outpost to Meir at 9:40 a.m. EDT on Saturday. Then he, Mikaev, and Williams will end their eight-month space research mission at 3:03 a.m. on Sunday when they undock from the Rassvet module aboard the Soyuz MS-28. Expedition 75 officially begins and Expedition 74 ends when the Soyuz departs the orbital outpost. They will parachute back to Earth inside the Soyuz and land in Kazakhstan at 6:25 a.m. (3:25 p.m. local time). All mission events will be streamed live on NASA+ and other platforms.
Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station on X, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.
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