We’re not scheduled to work here on the Space Station this weekend after all, except for the usual cleaning activities. As you might have heard, the Dragon resupply vehicle is not here yet, so we’re not rushing to get urgent cargo out and get the science started. The good news is that it’s off the ground now. Hurrah and congratulations!
So Butch and I will have a final on-board training session tomorrow to get us ready to capture Dragon on Monday. On Tuesday we’ll ingress and start a challenging few weeks of intense scientific and logistics work, before we send Dragon back at the end of its mission.
The mission of ATV5 will also come to an end next month and that’s of course a big vehicle to load.
Most of its time onboard it has remained quite empty, because of center of mass considerations in case of an emergency undocking. Fortunately in the past weeks we’ve had permission to progressively move more and more trash to ATV, which has freed up a lot of space in our stowage module, the PMM, and made it a lot easier to find things in there! In fact, the unfortunate mishap of the Orb-3 mission back in October was not only a loss of cargo, but also meant that we have quite a bit of trash onboard now that would otherwise be gone by now.
Yesterday Butch and I installed adapter plates on top of the filled stowage compartments on the walls of ATV – more bags of trash will be secured to these adapters, so that we fill the internal volume as much as possible. As you can see in the picture, it’s starting to look a bit like caving working in there, it’s kind of fun!
On Thursday, I also worked with the Spheres again most of the day – you can find more on Spheres on Logbook L+23. The finals of the ZeroRobotics competitions are approaching fast (good luck!), but this was a actually a series of test runs using a smartphone and its camera, attached to one of the Spheres, to navigate.
I also did some work with our acoustic dosimeters, taking 24-hour measurements of the noise levels in specific locations on ISS. Before that, we all carried a personal dosimeter with us for a 24-hour period, so we all had a big mic attached to our collar. Very stylish!
The loudest place on ISS is by far the immediate vicinity of the T2 treadmill when someone is running on it, especially a fast runner. That’s why there is a recommendation to wear earplugs whenever we run: we have custom made earplugs with speakers that protect us from the treadmill noise and at the same time allow us to listen to music while working out.
Besides the dosimeters, in the past holiday weeks we’ve been tasked with several activities that need to performed periodically to monitor the ISS environment and equipment. One day Terry, Butch and I were all going systematically through the modules: Terry was verifying the condition of all our emergency equipment (the oxygen masks and fire extinguishers stowed throughout ISS); Butch was taking water samples from the cooling lines; and I was measuring the airflow velocity through the ventilation grids, which the ground analyzes to determine if there’s any blockage or clogging of the filters.
I guess it’s like the periodic inspection on your car, except that the ISS is infinitely more complex and we can’t take it to a garage to get it fixed!
Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42
avamposto42.esa.int
(Trad IT) Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiCAST qui:
https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook
(Trad FR) Traduction en français par +Anne Cpamoa ici:
https://spacetux.org/cpamoa/category/traductions/logbook-samantha
(Trad ES – Currently not updated) Tradducción en español aquí:
https://www.intervidia.com/category/bitacora
11/01/2015