Four Expedition 72 astronauts took a well-deserved break on Monday following last week’s busy period of crew swap activities and advanced microgravity research. The rest of the International Space Station residents kicked off the week with ongoing space science and life support maintenance duties.

NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers along with JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov are in their second week aboard the orbiting lab. They arrived at the space station on March 15as SpaceX Crew-10 members inside a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. McClain and Onishi are both space veterans on their second station mission while Ayers and Peskov are first-time space flyers.

The four crewmates continue getting up to speed with living in weightlessness and the numerous space station systems they will use every day. They are also beginning a series of both new and ongoing station experiments benefiting humans living on and off the Earth.

However, McClain, Ayers, and Onishi relaxed on Monday with NASA Flight Engineer Don Pettit who has been aboard the space station since Sept. 11, 2024. Pettit assisted the new crewmates last week helping them adjust to life on orbit and start their first space science investigations. The quartet used the free time for catching up with family on the ground, personal activities such as reading and listening to music, and looking at the Earth below from the cupola.

Peskov stayed busy on Monday along with his fellow cosmonauts station Commander Alexey Ovchinin and Flight Engineer Ivan Vagner. Peskov began his day with water transfers then ended his shift inspecting and cleaning the station’s Roscosmos modules. Ovchinin installed and activated a camera remotely controlled by students to photograph landmarks on Earth from the Harmony module. Vagner worked in the Nauka science module’s glovebox exploring methods to create sterile conditions aboard spacecraft for safe biological research activities.

Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on X, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts

Quelle: NASA