This week is shaping up to be busy for the International Space Station (ISS) as the Expedition 70 septet will see the arrival of three new crew members and the delivery of new science later this week. Aboard the orbital complex, the four NASA residents had a light-duty day ahead of upcoming mission events, while the three cosmonauts completed some routine station maintenance and training.
Upcoming Space Missions
NASA and SpaceX are targeting 4:55 p.m. EDT Thursday, March 21 for liftoff of SpaceX’s 30th commercial resupply mission from the Space Launch Complex 40 in Florida. The Dragon cargo craft will deliver new science investigations, food, and supplies to the crew when it autonomously docks to the zenith port of the Harmony module at 7:30 a.m. Saturday, March 23.
At the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the International Space Station’s Expedition 71 crew, NASA astronaut Tracy C. Dyson, Soyuz commander Oleg Novitskiy of Roscosmos, and spaceflight participant Marina Vasilevskaya of Belarus participated in a variety of activities on March 6-18 as they prepared for their upcoming mission. Credit: NASA
International Crew Launch
Ahead of Dragon’s liftoff, three crew members—NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson, cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky, and Flight Engineer Marina Vasilevskaya of Belarus—will launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 9:21 a.m. Thursday, March 21. The international crew will dock to the station only a few hours later at 12:39 p.m. before opening the hatch and joining the Expedition 70 crew in microgravity. Dyson will spend approximately six months living and working in low Earth orbit, while Novitsky and Vasilevskaya will spend about two weeks on station before departing with NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara.
Station Activities and Maintenance
O’Hara, along with her three NASA crewmates Jeanette Epps, Michael Barratt, and Matthew Dominick, had the day off aboard station on Monday as they gear up for a busy week. The quartet did schedule in some time for their required two hours of exercise using the station’s treadmill, Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED), and the station’s bicycle, CEVIS. Epps and O’Hara also set up equipment for the Standard Measures investigation that will be used later in the week.
The three cosmonauts—Commander Oleg Kononenko and Flight Engineers Nikolai Chub and Alexander Grebenkin—kept busy on Monday with a variety of tasks. Grebenkin and Chub conducted some routine orbital plumbing, while Kononenko audited equipment that will return to Earth aboard a Soyuz spacecraft in a few weeks. Grebenkin also collected equipment and surface samples around the Roscosmos segment for ongoing microbiology research, while Chub practiced his piloting techniques during a Pilot-T session.
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