Scientists reveal what's going on at the International Space Station
A whole «football team» of 11 people gathered on the International Space Station on Friday after the arrival of the American Crew Dragon ship called Endeavor ( «Pursuit»). Among the arrivals was the Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. The MK correspondent found out how difficult the launch and docking was, what the situation is now on the ISS, what the Russian crew plans to do in the near future.
The launch of the ship was originally scheduled for February 27, but it was canceled a few minutes before launch and postponed to March 2 due to a clogged filter on the ground-based igniter fluid supply system intended for the rocket engine. After the blockage was cleared, the Crew Dragon crew, consisting of NASA astronauts Woody Hoburg and Stephen Bowen, as well as an astronaut from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Sultan al-Neyadi and our Andrey Fedyaev, launched to the ISS on the second attempt.
However, its mooring to the Harmony node module on March 3 also failed the first time. This happened only at 09.43 Moscow time, an hour and a half later than planned. It was a malfunction of the docking hook sensor on the Dragon. The SpaceX team had to, as they say, write a new program to unlock the system on the go. Only after the new algorithm was transferred to the ship and the automation started working, the docking was completed.
After the Endeavor crew entered the station at 11:30 a.m., the number of its members amounted to 11 people, along with Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokopiev, Dmitry Petelin, Anna Kikina, NASA astronauts Francisco Rubio, Nicole Mann, Josh Kassada, as well as an astronaut of the Japan Space Agency (JAXA ) Koichi Wakata. So crowded at the space station will be until March 9, when the landing of the American crew with the Russian woman Anna Kikina is scheduled. After that, 7 people will remain on the ISS.
The situation aboard the station is normal at this time. The Russian transport manned spacecraft Soyuz MS-22, from which a coolant leak occurred on December 15 last year, and the temperature on board rose to 70 degrees, is being prepared for an unmanned descent. It is scheduled for the end of March.
Instead, on February 26, Roskosmos docked the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft to the ISS, which should transport Sergei Prokopiev, Dmitry Petelin and Francisco Rubio to Earth only in September. Thus, a business trip to orbit for our cosmonauts will stretch from the planned 6 months to a year. However, they will not be bored. Several scientific experiments are planned on board. In addition, the unmanned Soyuz MS-23 brought additional equipment for them with mushrooms and algae.
As Nikolai Staritsyn, an employee of Biokhimmash OJSC, told MK, one of the experiments that scientists plan to conduct in orbit is called Cascade.
— We sent two small bioreactors to the ISS on the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft, Staritsyn explains. — The first is a ball with a diameter of 15 centimeters, in which a microorganism of a fungal culture isolated from the roots of wild rosemary is placed. It belongs to fungi that enrich the soil microbiocenosis and develop the root system of many plants (not only rosemary). If we want to create a biological life support system (BLS) in space in the future, we will need such microorganisms to grow vegetation.
The second cubic reactor contains two types of algae — chlorella and spirulina. They may also be useful in the future for BSOZh as sources of oxygen and nutrient biomass.
Both reactors are hermetically sealed to prevent the possible spread of harmful microflora at the station. It is assumed that both reactors will be returned to Earth on the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft.