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[cont.] As you might have guessed, there was one last leak check to be performed before undocking: the leak check of the hatch between the descent module and the orbital module. Eventually, we would separate from the orbital module and the descent module hatch would be the one protecting us from vacuum! Right now, of course, the pressure across the hatch was roughly equal: after all, we had just closed it a few minutes earlier. To perform a leak check, we had to create a pressure differential and to do that we would vent some air from the orbital module into space via the relief valve. Anton selected the closing command on his display, so that he would be able to reclose the valve with a simple button push. Once that was done, I opened the relief valve. On our life support display we watched the pressure in the orbital module drop, until Anton sent the command to close the valve. We had created a pressure differential of about 150 mm Hg and now we would check for any pressure equalization across the hatch: maximum acceptable pressure drop in the descent module was 25 mm Hg in 25 minutes. At the end of the monitoring time we were well within that requirement: leak check passed! Finally, it was time to wait. Patiently. For almost an hour: a buffer time inserted in our timeline in case of problems. Let’s imagine, for example, an issue with the suit leak check: we would have disconnected and reconnected the gloves, opened and reclosed the helmet, making really sure that no debris was caught in the sealing surface, and then we would have performed the leak check again. Or let’s say that the descent module hatch would have failed the leak check: we would have equalized the pressure, opened the hatch, verified that the sealing surfaces were intact and clean and then reclosed for another leak check. All things that require time. But since everything had gone smoothly in our pre-departure ops, there we were, fully strapped in our seats, waiting. It’s nice not to be rushed, but of course the “sitting” position in the Soyuz is not the most comfortable one, even for a small person like me – I can imagine how painful it can be for bigger crewmembers to sit for so long with the knees bent towards the chest! We talked, we joked, we took some glances out the windows, we reviewed procedures for the upcoming reentry, we thought about our friends on the Space Station, still so close, but already belonging to another world. Then, at 13:17:30 Moscow time I sent the command to turn on the Soyuz docking system. One minute later, at 13:18:30 I sent the next command: Hooks Open. The electrical motors of the docking system started to drive the hooks that kept us attached to the Space Station to the open position. Within a couple of minutes the hooks were fully open and the spring-loaded pushers imparted to our Soyuz a separation velocity: on the periscope view in front of Anton’s central seat we could observe the docking port further and further away. That was it, we were leaving. Good bye Space Station! Good bye Scott, Misha, Gennady! [cont] Photo: our Soyuz departing from ISS Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42 avamposto42.esa.int RICORDATE DI VOTARE PER AVAMPOSTO42 AI MACCHIANERA ITALIAN AWARDS! https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=822247314539790 (Trad IT)  Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS 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) Tradducción en español por +Carlos Lallana Borobio https://laesteladegagarin.blogspot.com.es/search/label/SamLogBook (Trad DE) Deutsche Übersetzung von https://www.logbuch-iss.de (Trad RUS) Русский перевод +Dmitry Meshkov https://samlogbook-ru.livejournal.com

This is the fourth entry in a final series of logbooks looking back at departure, landing and re-adaptation! Strapping in in the Soyuz is not as quick as fastening your seatbelt: the space is cramped, the position uncomfortable, some of the straps are hard to reach. Additionally, as I had learned during our Sokol leak check, being weightless doesn’t make it any easier, since your body doesn’t stay put in the seat. So I was glad when everything was done: oxygen and ventilation hoses attached, com and biomedical cables connected, shoulder, lap and knee straps fastened. I didn’t tighten them, since it would still be several hours before the deorbit burn and our re-entry in the atmosphere. In spite of the physical effort of strapping in, I still didn’t feel too warm in the Sokol, so I did not turn on the suit ventilation, enjoying a few more minutes of quietness. Over the radio came the dear, familiar voice of our Soyuz instructor, Dima, who would be on space-to-ground from Moscow today, just like he had been our “control center voice” for hundreds of hours in the simulator back in Star City. He asked me for the status of our suit donning ops and I reported that I was strapped in and Anton was helping Terry in the orbital module. Then I selected the page on my command-and-control display showing the technical parameters of our vehicle. Everything looked good, except that our CO2 level was trending high, close to 4 mm Hg. I was about to report it, but Mission Control Moscow was obviously watching it already via telemetry: Dima instructed me over the radio to activate our CO2 scrubbing now, a bit earlier than it would have been foreseen in the checklist. A few more pressure reports from Terry and Anton, which I relayed to Moscow, and the leak check was deemed complete and passed: undocking from the ISS was safe. By the way, I should add that we had also performed a check of the attitude thrusters a few days before undocking. First, the flight controllers had taken the ISS in drift mode, meaning that the Station would allow itself to be brought slightly out of attitude by the Soyuz thrusters firings, without actively trying to compensate for those disturbances. Then Anton and I had taken our seats in the Soyuz, we had configured Soyuz systems so that the manual controls would control thrusters firings and Anton had deflected the controllers in all six degrees of freedom in sequence, giving us a chance to make sure that they would react properly to all control inputs, both the in primary and backup control loop. Back to the departure day, it was now Terry’s turn to strap himself in the seat. Within a few minutes Anton also joined us in the descent module, closing the hatch that separated us from the orbital module. Once we were all strapped in, we put on the gloves and closed the helmet to start the leak check of our suits. First we turned the blue regulator valve on our chests to the closed position and the simple ventilation flow from the fans blew up our suits just slightly. Then Anton gave a short 5-seconds countdown, at the end of which he started the stopwatch, as I simultaneously opened the valve that started an oxygen flow into our suits. We each monitored the increase of suit pressure on our wrist manometer and reported when we reached 0,1 atm and 3,5 atm, so that Anton could write down the “filling times”. The ground was also following along, since we had locked-in the transmit button before starting the leak check. After reaching 3.5 atm each of us let the suit deflate, controlling the flow rate with the regulator valve in order to give time to our ears to compensate for the pressure drop. Then we opened our helmet and I closed the supply line from the oxygen tanks. We would not remove the gloves any more until after landing. Good news: all of our suits had “filled up” within the required time, passing the leak check. Another potential hurdle on our departure schedule was behind us! Photo: from this screenshot from our launch video you can see how cramped it is in the Soyuz! Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42 avamposto42.esa.int RICORDATE DI VOTARE PER AVAMPOSTO42 AI MACCHIANERA ITALIAN AWARDS! https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=822247314539790 (Trad IT)  Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS 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) Tradducción en español por +Carlos Lallana Borobio https://laesteladegagarin.blogspot.com.es/search/label/SamLogBook (Trad DE) Deutsche Übersetzung von https://www.logbuch-iss.de (Trad RUS) Русский перевод +Dmitry Meshkov https://samlogbook-ru.livejournal.com

This is the third entry in a final series of logbooks looking back at departure, landing and re-adaptation! [cont.] After depressurizing the vestibule, we observed for a few minutes the pressure indications for the descent module and the orbital module of our Soyuz: both stable, so there was no obvious, fast leak. (Not that we were expecting one!). Of course we needed to check for a slow leak as well, before we committed to leaving the Station and relying on the Soyuz hatch to keep our air inside. The full leak check would take 30 min, with measurements of the vestibule pressure recorded every 5 min, but since there was no fast pressure drop it was safe for us to reopen the hatch of the descent module and float back to the orbital module to don our Sokol suits. I went first, as we had planned. Anton and Terry stayed in the descent module while I used the Soyuz toilet. I wanted to empty my bladder as late as possible: I did wear a diaper, but I wasn’t sure I would be able to use it in the several hours of weightlessness that still lay between us and the deorbit burn. Somehow diapers and weightlessness don’t get along for me, as I had experienced during ascent. I put on my biomedical belt in direct contact with the skin and then my Sokol underwear, periodically calling the vestibule pressure readings from the manovacumeter to Anton and Terry, so they could report them to the ground. Over the course of 30 minutes, the maximum allowed pressure increase to call the hatches air tight was 1 mm Hg. Anton joined me in the orbital module to help me don the Sokol. To make things faster, I basically held on to keep myself as still as possible and let Anton take care of tying and zipping up everything. One of the cool things about being an astronaut: you can let somebody else dress you as an adult and nobody laughs at you! As Anton pointed out, we didn’t have a whole lot of time. Because of a test of the Kurs antennas, which would run in the background during our undocking, the ground was going to send the activation command of the guidance and navigation system over an hour earlier than they normally would on a typical departure day schedule. We were already talking Moscow-time at that point, since this the time on which we run Soyuz ops: the night before we had diligently written the significant times in our checklists, based on the radiogram sent up by Mission Control Moscow. Not only vacuum separated us now from the Space Station but, in a way, also three hours! After I was all dressed up in my Sokol, which would keep me alive in case of depressurization during re-entry, I took a last sip of water from a bag that would stay in the orbital module, grabbed one last snack and then floated to my seat in the descent module. It didn’t escape me that those were my last few seconds of free floating: once strapped in in my seat, I wouldn’t unstrap until after landing on Earth. [cont] Photo: in the Sokol a few days before undocking for a preliminary leak check. #SamLogbook #Futura42 Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42 avamposto42.esa.int RICORDATE DI VOTARE PER AVAMPOSTO42 AI MACCHIANERA ITALIAN AWARDS! https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=822247314539790 (Trad IT)  Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS 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) Tradducción en español por +Carlos Lallana Borobio https://laesteladegagarin.blogspot.com.es/search/label/SamLogBook (Trad DE) Deutsche Übersetzung von https://www.logbuch-iss.de (Trad RUS) Русский перевод +Dmitry Meshkov https://samlogbook-ru.livejournal.com

After a summer of rehab and debriefs (and yes, 2 weeks of vacation), time to wrap up the story of my mission to ISS. This is the first entry in a final series of logbooks looking back at departure, landing and re-adaptation! 11 June 2015 Looks like this time they mean it: after a delay of one month, this time they really want us to go home. It was an early wake-up for our very last day on ISS: the morning Daily Planning Conference, our tagup with the control centers to start the day, was scheduled for 1 am! But we did go to sleep in the early afternoon yesterday, in fact we have been sleep shifting for a couple of days. Undocking is not until 10:18 am, but there’s a lot to do before we can send that command to open the hooks that keep our Soyuz attached to the Space Station. And if you’re imagining us taking our time to say our mental farewell, leisurely savoring our last few hours in space…well, of course you’re not, you know better than that! In fact, the morning was busy as ever. Scott and I were in Columbus even before DPC, assisting each other with our blood draws. This was a so-called “ambient blood draw”, meaning that the tubes don’t go into the MELFI freezers, but return to Earth on the Soyuz instead. They will be retrieved from the descent modules right after we are extracted. The blood draw in itself was no different than any other we’ve done, but the packing instructions did look daunting, especially regarding some particular tubes that Scott uses for his Twin Study. I will be forever grateful to him for offering to taking care of all the packing on his own, so I could save some time for a final tour of the Space Station. Thanks Scott! However, I did get my share of packing as well. Remember the Stem Cells Differentiation experiment from the L+141/144 Logbook? Well, those samples need to go home today as well, so I got to retrieve them from MELFI and pack them in insulated pouches for return. There isn’t much space in the Soyuz descent module, as you can imagine, so we try to pack things as compact as possible. In case of early-retrieval items, we put the number of the package on a green label and we also take a picture, that will be made available to the retrieval team at the landing site, so they know exactly what to look for. Of course, Anton is loading the Soyuz exactly according to the cargo plan: having the center of mass in the right place is important in a space vehicle, especially if it’s your ride back to Earth! By the way, it’s not only blood that I have been donating to science today. First thing after waking up for the last time in my floating sleeping bag, I took three different saliva samples – a 10-min routine that I have performed many times by now for the experiments Microbiome and Salivary markers. Oh, and don’t forget urine collection! I will be filling out urine tubes and putting them into the MELFI freezer at every void until hatch closure. The glamour of spaceflight… Picture: retrieving the Stem Cell Differentiation samples from the MELFI freezer. #SamLogbook #Futura42 Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42 avamposto42.esa.int RICORDATE DI VOTARE PER AVAMPOSTO42 AI MACCHIANERA ITALIAN AWARDS! (Trad IT) Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS 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) Tradducción en español por +Carlos Lallana Borobio https://laesteladegagarin.blogspot.com.es/search/label/SamLogBook (Trad DE) Deutsche Übersetzung von https://www.logbuch-iss.de (Trad RUS) Русский перевод +Dmitry Meshkov https://samlogbook-ru.livejournal.com

Have you heard the news? Today,  Roscosmos, the Russian Space Agency, has officially announced that our landing is delayed until early June, which means that… Terry, Anton and I get to stay a few extra weeks in space! As I’m writing this I just can’t believe that our original landing date was tomorrow and I would now be about to jump in my ISS sleeping bag for the very last time. I suppose I wasn’t mentally ready to leave quite yet, partly due for sure to the fact that this change of plans has been in the air for quite some time. After the loss of Progress 59P two weeks ago, we all immediately realized that the next Soyuz launch would likely be delayed to buy time for a full investigation, implementation of any corrective actions deemed necessary and possibly the launch of another unmanned vehicle first. Whether our return would be postponed as well was less clear: on the one hand there are obvious advantages in having a full crew complement onboard, on the other hand we had just lost a cargo resupply ship and consumables might have been an issue (turned out they aren’t). As we waited for the ISS partner agencies to make a decision, we were scheduled last week for all the activities required to keep us on track for a nominal landing: we performed a leak check of our Sokol pressure suits (leak check passed!); we fit checked our Kentavr compression shorts; we continued to pre-gather cargo for our Soyuz, including our personal 1,5 kg allocation and we packed our few other personal items for return to Earth on Dragon. Anton and I refreshed our manual reentry skills.  Since a final decision about delaying our landing had not been made, we had to be ready. However the Soyuz thrusters’ test, which was scheduled early on Friday morning, was canceled and at that point it was clear that we weren’t going home on May 13th. Ready and happy to stay! And no worries: I still have underwear, socks and even one of my bonus food containers left. I’m really glad that I saved some of those basic supplies, just in case! I was also able to recover a couple of brand new T-shirts that I had already used to wrap some Dragon return items: they might have some glue residue from the gray tape on them, but they’ll do the trick if I need them! Talking about Dragon, looks like Terry and I will unexpectedly be around for the full SpaceX-6 mission: we’re diligently packing and loading bags clearing space on ISS, which is always welcome. We’re also doing more preparatory work to move PMM to the Node 3 forward location and… who knows?  The actual move might actually happen soon, instead of next summer. Since we’re not going anywhere for a while, the planners will find ways to make good use of our time onboard. And I would be thrilled about enjoying, even for a few days, a 360 degrees unrestricted view from the Cupola! #SamLogbook #Futura42 Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42 avamposto42.esa.int (Trad IT)  Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS 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) Tradducción en español por +Carlos Lallana Borobio https://laesteladegagarin.blogspot.com.es/search/label/SamLogBook (Trad DE) Deutsch von https://www.logbuch-iss.de (Trad Russo)+Dmitry Meshkov https://samlogbook-ru.livejournal.com

Friday was one of those days when periodic bathroom visits are a bit more complicated than usual… it was time for another 24-hour urine collection, followed on Saturday morning by a blood draw, this time with “Scott the Vampire” who helped me fill up seven tubes of blood. These collections were in support of the Cardio-Ox experiment, which I have talked about in the last logbook, as well as the “Biochemical Profile” and “Repository” projects of the Johnson Space Center. These are not actual experiments, but rather aim at providing data that can potentially support a variety of research, both current and future, into the human adaptation to spaceflight. “Biochemical Profile” tests urine and blood samples for a number of proteins and chemicals, which are known to be significant indicators of the metabolic state of the body (biomarkers): a database is created and data can be made available to researchers who request it to support their investigations. “Repository” is a similar concept, but with an eye to the future. Urine and blood samples are collected and stored long-term under controlled conditions and will be made available in the future to researchers who make a solid scientific case for having them. In the future scientists will be able to test those samples with more advanced analysis methods and they might even be interested in biomarkers that are still unknown to us today! I concluded my 24-hour urine collection with the first toilet visit on Saturday morning, but three hours after breakfast I did fill one more tube, together with a saliva sample, for the Italian experiment Bone Muscle Check, which aims at validating the analysis of saliva samples to quantify the reduction of bone and muscle mass. If reliable biomarkers can be found in saliva, one does not have to rely on much more invasive and time-consuming blood draws! In the picture you can see some of our laboratory equipment for human research, including the urine collection bag. As you can imagine, peeing in a cup wouldn’t work very well up here. I remember testing a new female adapter on my very first parabolic flight almost exactly 5 years ago – in the cabin of the ZeroG aircraft, but inside a special tent! I’ll also confess that I had some urine collection devices with me in Baikonur and I practiced with them before launch. In the end, there’s two things that you really want to be very familiar with when you’re about to launch to space: your spaceship and everything that has to do with using the toilet! #SamLogbook #Futura42 Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42 avamposto42.esa.int (Trad IT)  Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS 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) Tradducción en español por +Carlos Lallana Borobio https://laesteladegagarin.blogspot.com.es/search/label/SamLogBook (Trad DE) Deutsch von https://www.logbuch-iss.de (Trad Russo) +Dmitry Meshkov https://samlogbook-ru.livejournal.com

Another weekend is over, only one left on the Space Station. The big event of the weekend of course was the first espresso brewing, which we can now even enjoy in 3D-printed zeroG cups… I’ll tell you all about that in another logbook, I promise. For now, I still have to catch up on last week’s activities! Wednesday was the day when we declared victory on Dragon unpack… and seamlessly moved on to the next fight: packing and loading! As you might remember, we had done a little bit of pre-packing before Dragon even showed up, pre-staging bags with a nice green “SpX-6 Return” label and a unique number on the Node 2 forward endcone. Now it’s time to fill up those bags with more return items and, of course, prepare many more bags. It’s nice to be able to start loading things into Dragon. With both the newly arrived cargo and the cargo that will be returned stowed on ISS right now, the logistic situation can be challenging: in PMM, our main stowage modules, most rack fronts are covered with big bags secured with bungees, so getting things in and out of the actual stowage compartments takes some work and patience! As for science, Wednesday and Thursday I worked mainly on the ongoing TripleLux-A experiment and on my last session of Cardio-Ox. Cardio-Ox is the short version of the name, by the way. If you’re curious about the full name of the experiment, here it is: “Defining the Relationship Between Biomarkers of Oxidative and Inflammatory Stress and the Risk for Atherosclerosis in Astronauts During and After Long-duration Spaceflight.” If you had the patience to read through the end, the name really says it all! It is reasonable to suppose that spaceflight, due to exposure to radiation, altered food intake, reduced physical activity and an overall stressful environment, may cause an increased level of oxidative stress and inflammation. Both these undesirable conditions can be indirectly measured by determining the concentration of certain molecules in blood and urine: these molecules are  the “biomarkers” in the experiment title. So, the first result of the experiment is to actually quantify oxidative stress and inflammation and for that purpose I have provided several blood and urine samples during the mission. But the second part is: how do oxidative stress and inflammation correlate with the risk of atherosclerosis? To determine that, I have performed several remotely-guided ultrasound observations of my carotid and brachial arteries, looking for structural and functional changes that are considered good predictors of atherosclerosis risk. By the way, this is a long term study: the last post-flight session will be 5 years after flight. Not sure I will still be writing logbooks at that point, but just in case, if you’re curious, look for that R+1825 entry! Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42 avamposto42.esa.int #SamLogbook #Futura42 (Trad IT)  Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS 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) Tradducción en español por +Carlos Lallana Borobio https://laesteladegagarin.blogspot.com.es/search/label/SamLogBook (Trad DE) Deutsch von https://www.logbuch-iss.de (Trad Russo)+Dmitry Meshkov https://samlogbook-ru.livejournal.com

Another week has gone by on ISS, one of my last on board. Time sure flies when you’re having fun! Well, the biggest news of this past week, as I’m sure you’ve heard, is that the Russian resupply vehicle Progress 59P didn’t make it to ISS. On Tuesday morning we received a call from Houston saying that Mission Control – Moscow had downmoded the mission profile to a two-day rendezvous, as opposed to the standard 6-hour profile that would have had Progress dock to ISS by early afternoon. Of course, there’s a lot of minor issues that can force a transition to a 2-day profile, so at that point we still expected to see Progress pull up in its parking spot by Thursday. We know now that 59P will never make it to ISS. Mission controllers in Moscow have valiantly tried all they could with the available telemetry and commanding capability, but unfortunately all efforts to recover the resupply mission have been unsuccessful. The focus of the community has now shifted from the recovery attempts to analyzing the mishap and finding the cause. We’ll know more once our Russian colleagues will have concluded the investigation which, inevitably, will take a while. In the meantime, teams are assessing the impacts to the ISS program: what is the consumable situation? How about trash removal capability that has been lost? What are the implications for the next Soyuz launch and, consequently, the impacts on ISS activities? As you can imagine, it’s a complicated problem and, as is often the case, I’m happy that I’m just an astronaut and I’m only responsible for carrying out my tasks up here. People on the ground have a much tougher job, especially these days! The good news is that we’re not going to run out of food, water, oxygen or any other vital consumables any time soon – we have plenty on margin. On humanity’s outpost in space no astronaut is going to bed hungry! And we’re busy as usual keeping the Space Station in shape, transferring cargo and, of course, doing science. On Tuesday, in particular, as the Progress story unfolded, I spent most of the day working on the final session of the Italian Space Agency experiment Drain Brain: ultrasound session in the morning, plus breathing sessions with the pletismographs morning and afternoon. If this doesn’t ring a bell, you might have missed my L+57, L+58 Logbook, where I talked about Drain Brain! Congratulations to the team on the completion of the experiment! Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42 avamposto42.esa.int #SamLogbook #Futura42 (Trad IT)  Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS 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) Tradducción en español por +Carlos Lallana Borobio https://laesteladegagarin.blogspot.com.es/search/label/SamLogBook (Trad DE) Deutsch von https://www.logbuch-iss.de (Trad Russo)+Dmitry Meshkov https://samlogbook-ru.livejournal.com

After working on a number of new experiments early last week, on Thursday I spent most of my day working on cargo ops, mainly unpacking those gigantic bags that, as I mentioned earlier, we moved out of Dragon and temporarily stowed on Station while we unloaded  urgent science. You can never tell how long it will take to unpack a bag just by looking at the number of items it contains: even a few items can take a long time if the stowage locations are challenging. Let’s say, for example, that you have to rotate a rack to get to a stowage compartment that is located in the aft, curved part of the rack, the one that lies against the cylindrical hull of a module. Rotating a rack in itself is not complicated, but often you have to move stuff out of the way of the rotation path: bags, cables, computers, cameras… and then put them back once you are done. Imagine rotating part of your wall at home to access a secret room in the back, except that you have plenty of stuff attached to the wall and to the ceiling! Anyway, I owe you some words about the Nematode muscle experiment I worked on last week. First of all, please welcome back to the International Space Station our good old friends, the C.Elegans. Yes, thanks to their very well understood genetic makeup, these tiny worms are a very popular model organism, on and off the planet! Remember the Epigenetics experiment? But let’s talk about this new experiment. As the name implies, it’s about muscle, and specifically muscle atrophy. It’s very clear by now that muscle atrophy is a consequence of spaceflight and it makes sense intuitively, but we don’t understand yet the basic biological mechanisms that lead to loss of muscle mass. See, we astronauts can counteract these negative effects by working out every day, because we are healthy. But what about sick people who are bed-ridden? Understanding the molecular mechanisms that cause muscle atrophy could be useful in finding ways to help them! Like so often in science, Nematode muscle is a follow-up experiment that builds on previous space research. The team has already established a few years ago that if you fly C. Elegans to space they will have a reduced protein concentration in muscles and in the cytoskeleton (the “bones” of the cell). Also, quite interestingly, their metabolism will shift to an energy-saving mode. Now the question is: how do cells receive signals that induce those changes? How is the message conveyed? And, for those of you who are into biology, I’ll add that the insulin/IGF-1 signaling, in particular, will be investigated, so see if it can account alone for the metabolic changes. Or maybe, on the contrary, there’s more out there to find out about how cells “get the message”. Fascinating stuff! The weekend, by the way, was pretty quiet up here. We even got most of Friday off to recover from working two weeks straight, which was nice. Terry and I are heading home in just a couple of weeks and there’s still a lot to be done to wrap up our Space Station life and get things ready to welcome the next inhabitants of our outpost in space. P.S. Many thanks to +Dmitry Meshkov who is now translating this logbook in Russian, starting with the most recent ones. And of course, renewed thanks to the Italian, French, Spanish and German translators of #SamLogbook for their continuing amazing work. You guys rock! Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42 avamposto42.esa.int #SamLogbook #Futura42 (Trad IT)  Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS 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) Tradducción en español por +Carlos Lallana Borobio https://laesteladegagarin.blogspot.com.es/search/label/SamLogBook (Trad DE)  Deutsch von https://www.logbuch-iss.de (Trad Russo) +Dmitry Meshkov https://samlogbook-ru.livejournal.com