Good morning and welcome to today's International Space Station update hour.
You are joining us here in the International Space Station flight control room
where the Orbit 2 team is currently
on console monitoring all the systems onboard the orbiting laboratory.
That team today's being led by Flight Director Ron Spencer, there on the right,
and joining him at the capcom position, serving as the voice link between controllers here
on the ground and astronauts up in space, is Anna Fisher.
And those astronauts up in space right now are the Expedition 30 crew.
You can see them here.
They're being led by NASA astronaut Dan Burbank, there in the front left of your screen.
Behind him, are Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin,
and moving further across the back row, you have European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers
and NASA astronaut Don Pettit all the way on the end there.
And finally in the front right, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko.
The crew started their day waking up about 1 a.m. Central time today,
and went right into a number of science experiments and maintenance activities
to consume all the hours their day today.
Commander Burbank, a little bit earlier today,
was gathering up some hardware reviewing procedures for some maintenance work he is going
to be doing tomorrow on one of the Amine Swingbed payloads.
It's an investigation on board the station to help determine
if a vacuum regenerated aiming system can effectively remove carbon dioxide
from the atmosphere, and then this is typically a device used on short duration space missions,
so this is just the payload to try and test that viability.
And currently right now onboard the station, Commander Burbank is working
with the Combustion Integrated Rack, you can see him, here is a live view,
he is going be replacing the fluids and combustion facility displaying control module.
This will be an activity that will take quite a few hours today.
That Combustion Integrated Rack includes such items as an optics bench, a combustion chamber,
fuel and oxidizer control and then a number different cameras inside,
all used to perform combustion experiments in microgravity.
Moving on, Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov was working
with the Russian BAR experiment alongside Anatoly Ivanishin,
that is a Russian investigation that helps to develop new procedures
for detecting any depressurization throughout the out the station's modules.
He also just got done finishing recording a few messages for events
across Russia alongside Anatoly Ivanishin and Oleg Kononenko.
A little bit later today, Shkaplerov will work on the orthostatic stability test,
which looks to study the distribution of fluids throughout his body,
and if it is having any detrimental effects on the astronauts health.
Again, Anatoly Ivanishin worked alongside with Shkaplerov on the BAR experiment,
and his day is going to fairly mirror Shkaplerov today, where he is also going
to be doing his own orthostatic stability test, and also just got done participating
in that Russian public affairs event, recording a few messages
for Russian audiences down the ground.
The third Russian cosmonaut, Oleg Kononenko, was doing some cargo transfer activities
with the Russian resupply ship, the Progress 46 vehicle, currently docked to the station,
and will also be doing a few exercise activities
and his own orthostatic stability test a little bit later today.
European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers is doing some cargo operations of his own,
but with the ATV-3, or the Edoardo Amaldi cargo vehicle,
a European Space Agency automated resupply vehicle that has been docked
to the station almost two weeks now, after docking back on March 28.
You can see there on the very back of this photo,
docked to the aft port of Zvezda service module.
And along with those cargo activities, he is also going to be working
with the Fluid Physics Experiment Facility, just replacing a few brackets and cover plates
and things like that, in order to keep the facility in place and protected.
And then our final Expedition 30 crew member, Don Pettit, immediately upon waking
up this morning at about 1 a.m. Central time, started collecting urine
and blood samples for the Human Research Facility.
These is astronauts serving as kind
of test subjects themselves during these long-duration spaceflights.
And he then stored all those samples of the MELFI freezer,
MELFI standing for Minus Eighty Degree Laboratory Freezer,
and that's used onboard the station to store all the biological samples of these astronauts take
for eventual transport down here at the ground.
He will also be configuring the station super sensitive high-definition camera,
placing it in the cupola to take more stunning views of aurora
as the station makes a few nighttime passes.