Work aboard the International Space Station has just begun in earnest and the crew is already improving many areas including living conditions, science research, power upgrades and other critically important areas of concern.
The International Space Station residents are wrapping up their work week today installing, improving and checking science communications gear. The Expedition 50 crew is also continuing to explore how long-term space flight affects eyesight.
Commander Shane Kimbrough and Flight Engineer Thomas Pesquet worked on increasing the operations and communication capabilities of science gear. The duo worked on separate devices to improve data transfers between different science racks allowing more research to be conducted on orbit.
NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson joined cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Andrey Borisenko for ongoing research into eye damage and vision changes that may be caused by living in space. A possible solution to the upward fluid pressure that may harm an astronaut’s eyes is the Lower Body Negative Pressure (LBNP) suit
Whitson donned the suit today which pulls fluids down towards the feet to offset the headward flow. Novitskiy and Borisenko used an ultrasound scan and performed eye checks on Whitson to determine the effectiveness of the suit.
Coming up in February, the next cargo shipment to the International Space Station will be conducted by SpaceX. Media coverage of the upcoming event is being accepted by NASA.
Written By: Mark Garcia NASA
UNIVERSAL DIGEST is pleased to be a conduit for some of NASA’s projects and work. This article and some others were written by NASA and are mostly unedited. We do not claim credit, we simply want to make them more available to the general public.
