The Expedition 67 crew was back to normal on Friday following the departure of four commercial crew astronauts early Thursday morning. The seven International Space Station astronauts and cosmonauts will live and work in space together until late summer.
The SpaceX Crew-3 mission ended at 12:43 a.m. EDT on Friday when the Dragon Endurance crew ship splashed down off the coast of Tampa, Florida. Nearly 24 hours earlier, Crew-3 Commander Raja Chari with Pilot Tom Marshburn and Mission Specialists Kayla Barron and Matthias Maurer undocked from the Harmony module’s forward port inside Dragon.
After saying farewell to the Crew-3 astronauts early Thursday, the orbiting lab’s four newest astronauts, who arrived the week before aboard the Dragon Freedom spaceship, closed the station’s hatches, went to bed about two hours later, and took the rest of the day off.
On Friday, NASA Flight Engineer Kjell Lindgren, who is one week into his second spaceflight, stowed emergency gear and checked out hydroponic hardware for the XROOTS space botany study. ESA (European Space Agency) Flight Engineer Samantha Cristoforetti, who is also on her second mission, spent her day maintaining orbital plumbing systems.
First time space-flyers Bob Hines and Jessica Watkins partnered once again in the Columbus laboratory module studying how the central nervous system adapts to weightlessness. Hines and Watkins were both selected as members of the 2017 class of astronaut candidates in August of the same year.
The station’s new commander, Oleg Artemyev, started his day installing video gear before continuing his weeklong research on ways to maximize the effectiveness of a space workout. Roscosmos Flight Engineer Sergey Korsakov also participated on the space exercise study before working on networking equipment. Roscosmos Flight Engineer Denis Matveev checked out systems inside the Rassvet and Zarya modules before performing Russian orbital maintenance tasks.
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