Blogs

New Status: Spinal Ultrasound: Flight Engineer (FE)-5 Parmitano completed his first of three planned Spinal Ultrasound scans with FE-6 Nyberg as the operator and with remote guidance assistance from ground specialists. The Crew Medical Restraint System (CMRS) was used for subject positioning.  Spinal Ultrasound aims to use ground and space-based studies to characterize spinal changes during and …

New Status: Biological Rhythms 48-hour Operations: Parmitano attached electrodes and will wear a Digital Walk Holter Electrocardiogram (ECG) for 48 hours. The investigation examines the circadian variations in the cardiac autonomic function during space flight. Results will be used to improve crew health technology on long-duration space flights. FASES Experiment: Parmitano installed the FASES experiment container …

New Status: Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV)-4 Operations: ATV4 hatch opening occurred early this morning with air samples taken by Vinogradov and Parmitano.  Vinogradov installed quick-release clamps along the hatchway and initiated an air scrubbing which processed and cleaned the ATV4 atmosphere for approximately 4 hours. Following the cleaning crew ingressed the vehicle again taking post-cleaning …

New Status: ATV4 Operations: ATV4 successfully docked to the ISS on Saturday, June 15. Russian management expressed concerns with suspected microbial growth on some of the cargo bags in the vehicle and therefore hatch opening scheduled for today was delayed while the coordination on microbial remediation was determined.  The current plan is to open the …

New Status: Off duty day for USOS Crew: Today was an off duty day for Flight Engineer (FE)-3 Cassidy, FE-5 Parmitano, and FE6 Nyberg as compensation for supporting tomorrow’s ATV4 operations. ATV4 is scheduled to dock tomorrow, Saturday June 15th at 8:46 am CST. Biological Rhythms: Nyberg terminated her first 24-hour Biological Rhythm measurement and exchanged the multimedia card …

New Status: Capillary Flow Experiment (CFE) Vane Gap-1: Flight Engineer (FE)-6 Nyberg completed the 8th of 11 planned test sessions. With ground direction, Nyberg used the CFE-2 vessel to observe fluid interface and critical wetting behavior in a cylindrical chamber with elliptic cross-section and an adjustable central perforated vane. CFE uses the low-gravity environment provided by …

New Status: Crew Holiday: Today the crew observed Russia Day, one of the four holidays they selected pre-Increment.  The Russian crewmembers were off duty and the USOS crewmembers performed light duty operations. Periodic Fitness Evaluation (PFE): FE-3 Cassidy with the assistance of FE-5 Parmitano performed his third monthly PFE.  The purpose of this activity is to monitor …

New Status: Russian Navigation Receiver Module [НПМ-3] Failure Status: Today on Daily Orbit 1, Mission Control Center – Moscow (MCC-M) power cycled НПМ-3 and recovered the GPS receiver. Specialists plan to use the GPS receiver in support of ATV4 docking scheduled for Saturday, June 15, 2013. Preliminary data indicates a software glitch triggering a failure message and …

New Status: Light Microscopy Module (LMM) Configuration: Flight Engineer (FE)-3 Cassidy completed the LMM reconfiguration for the next use of the Fluids and Combustion Facility (FCF) for the Advanced Colloids Experiment (ACE) payload. Cassidy bent a pin on the microscope to reduce the clearance issues in the Z-axis, installed the LMM X-Y Stage, LMM objective lenses, …

New Status:  Multi-purpose Small Payload Rack (MSPR) Combustion Chamber (CC) Leak Check: Flight Engineer (FE)-3 Cassidy successfully performed the final portion of the MSPR CC leak check today.  He conducted a positive pressure check, which was the third and final required leak check for the Combustion Chamber.  Last week he completed the a nitrogen gas supply …