The four astronauts who have been on board the international space station (ISS) since November continue to prepare for their return to earth. At the same time, four new astronauts are starting their missions and getting used to living and working in the orbital laboratory Expedition 67 commander Tom Mashburn is preparing to hand over control of the space station to Russian space agency flight engineer Oleg altemiev.
The traditional command handover ceremony will be held at NASA [TV] on Tuesday (May 3, 2022) at 2:45 p.m. Eastern time (11:45 a.m. Pacific time)( ?site_id=242986&euid=&t=https%3A%2F%2Flist.jd.com%2Flist.html%3Fcat%3D737%2C794%2C798%26ev%3D4155_76344%26sort%3Dsort_rank_asc%26trans%3D1%26JL%3D2_1_0%23J_crumbsBar ) The nine flight engineers of the space station will witness Mashburn's handover of the leadership of the space station to Russian astronaut altmiyev.
Meanwhile, Tom Mashburn and flight engineers Raja Charlie, Keira Baron and Matthias Maurer are packing up to return to earth. The four will board SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft Challenger later this week, and then unlock it from the front port of the harmony module to end their stay in the space station. One day after unlocking, the four will parachute off the coast of Florida, and Charlie will direct their journey home.
At the same time, the four newest members of the space station are starting their first scientific experiment in less than a week, and are also familiar with the laboratory system and operation.
NASA's first space flyers Robert Heins and Jessica Watkins worked in the Columbus Laboratory module on Monday to explore how microgravity affects their maneuverability. NASA flight engineer Sher Lingren collected and stored his blood and urine samples during his second mission, and then spent the rest of the day on the space station's familiarization and handover activities. Samantha cristoforetti, a flight engineer of the European Space Agency, repairs life support equipment and takes time to adapt to life on the space station.
His crew will be conducting the third space expedition at the end of the 67th space expedition. Yesterday, he worked in a pair of Russian experiments to explore future spacecraft and robot driving technology, as well as effective methods of exercising in weightlessness. Flight engineer Dennis matviev inspected the progress 80 cargo spacecraft of the international space station, and then continued to clean up after the spacewalk on April 28 to activate the manipulator. Flight engineer Sergey Korsakov replaced a computer from Russia and then participated in more space exercise research at the end of the day.