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
(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
04/05/2015