Terry was assigned to support me here onboard and our trainer Penny was ready to answer our questions on Space-To-Ground from Houston at 1 am local time! The only thing I will add on the topic is that, well, it’s good to have two arms!
With blood and salive samples safely in the MELFI freezer, I started my day by repressurizing the JEM airlock: as you may recall, we deployed a small satellite using the Japanese robotic arm last week and the satellite had been transferred outside via the Japanese airlock, which had remained at vacuum ever since.
Then I began a series of cleaning, inspection and minor maintenance activities on the Biolab rack in Columbus, the research facility dedicated to biology and live science. The purpose was to make sure Biolab is fully ready to support upcoming experiments. The Biolab activities took a bit less time than planned, so I was free to start the prepacking activity for the soon-to-arrive Dragon cargo vehicle: we will be very busy during the time in which Dragon will be docked, so it’s necessary to have the return cargo already packed and ready to be stowed quickly when the time comes.
I also got to take a sample out of the 3-D printer demonstrator which is located in the glovebox. The facility runs automatically, but a couple of times per day Butch or I will access the 3-D printer tray and remove the sample that has been printed. All these samples will return to Earth and will be compared to analogous samples printed by the same 3-D printer model on the ground, to determine the influence of weightlessness.
I also performed a couple of refill cycles of the urine tank in our Urine Processing Assembly from the urine containers from the Russian toilet. Probably not a dinner table topic, but if you’re curious about how we manage urine, and ultimately water, stay tuned…likely a topic of a future logbook!
By the way, for no reason whatsoever I have just tried to hold my arms along my body, in the natural position in which they have been all my life while standing: it’s amazing how much effort it actually takes to keep my weightless arms in that position. It’s not at all the natural position they want to be in.
The other thing I noticed when exercising is that my hands get a lot more tired from holding the bar, for example during a deadlift. I can’t quite explain it, but Terry suggested it might be due to the fact that I use my hands all day to translate along handrails. Could be…
Anyway, time to sleep for me now. I have been sleeping like a baby ever since I got here: I let myself float in my little sleeping cabin and have no pressure on my body at all. I think this is how I was always meant to sleep!
(In the picture you can see the Japanese airlock last week, when the outside door was open the slide table extended outside to present the satellite to the robotic arm).
Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42
avamposto42.esa.int
* #SamLogbook * * #Futura42 *
(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
04/12/2014