I’m in Japan this week for training at the Japanese Space and Exploration Agency (JAXA), in particular at the facilities located in Tsukuba, a university and science city not far from Tokyo.
As you certainly know, JAXA is an important partner of the ISS program. In the picture you can see JAXA’s significant contribution to Station: the Japanese laboratory JEM, also known as Kibo, with the smaller stowage module JLP attached to it. JEM also has a magnificent balcony, the JEM Exposed Facility (JEF) and even its own robotic arm, the JEMRMS (JEM Robotic Manipulator System).
Terry and I are here to complete our training flow on JEM systems and JEMRMS and to prepare as backups of Expedition 40/41, i.e. Alex and Reid. That includes training on their experiment complement, but does not include HTV training, since the Japanese cargo vehicle is not scheduled to be on ISS during their increment. Who knows, we might still get an HTV in our prime increment. In that case we’ll get the training next summer, when we’ll be back for a final Japanese trip.
Today’s training day was mainly dedicated to a review of the JEM systems, which I badly needed, since I got my initial JEM training in August 2012. I also had some additional classes ECLSS tasks – that’s the Environmental Control and Life Support System.
Some of those tasks might sound trivial, but it’s vital to perform them accurately if we want to have a good living environment on Station. One of the tasks that you really don’t want to mess up on orbit, for example, is measuring the velocity of air flowing through inlet/outlet grids in the ventilation system. We do that periodically with a dedicated air flow measurement tool. Why? Well, flight controllers on the ground have models of how that velocity field should look like. If the flow velocity becomes significantly smaller, there is a clogging issue in the ventilation ducts and it is necessary to… well… vacuum clean. Vacuum cleaning of the exposed grids is a weekly housekeeping task. But based on velocity measurements the ground might schedule a vacuum cleaning activity that requires you to open panels or tilt racks. Depending on the location affected, that can become a labor-intensive task, and certainly not a glamorous one. But that’s how we keep proper airflow in the ventilation ducts on Station.
(Trad IT) Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS qui:
https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook/
(Trad ES) Tradducción en español aquí:
https://www.intervidia.com/category/bitacora/
(Trad FR) Traduction en français par +Anne Cpamoa ici:
https://spacetux.org/cpamoa/category/traductions/logbook-samantha/
24/02/2014