NASA astronaut Scott Kelly (foreground) and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko participate in an emergency scenario training session
in an International Space Station mock-up/trainer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Credit: NASA/James Blair
functions, create a time course for
recovery, and develop field technologies that allow crew members to
assess their own physiological changes. Autonomous medical testing is
crucial for crew members in successfully carrying out tasks upon terrestrial
landings, as well as recovering and
adapting to their environment.
• Evaluate the current methods being used to counteract the
physiological changes we already
know occur, such as improved ex-
and lunar and planetary expeditions.
As always, there are other things to
be done on the station during their
mission other than biomedical research. But they’ll be there in a very
exciting time for the station. Two new
docking adapters will be installed
on two U.S. ports to accommodate
the upcoming commercial crew
spacecraft currently being designed
and built by Boeing and SpaceX
to bring astronauts to the ISS using
American launch vehicles. This in-
Learn more about the one-year mission at:
http://www.nasa.gov/content/one-year-crew/
ercise protocols to maximize the
benefit (reducing the negative
physiological effects of spaceflight, such as bone loss and muscle
atrophy) while minimizing the
crew members’ time required.
• Behavior and performance,
especially sleep and wake cycles,
cognitive performance, and team
efficiency, including brain imaging
pre-and post-flight. This research also
looks at behavioral issues associated
with isolation and confinement. Assessing how confinement affects individual and group performance will
be crucial for long duration missions
cludes moving one of the ISS storage
modules using the stations robotic
arm to a new location. Currently
there are at least six U.S. spacewalks
planned including at least three by
Kelly to support all the changes.
“I’ll be doing some of the spacewalks, some of the robotics and a
lot of the internal reconfiguration,”
Kelly said. “Actually, we’re starting
to refer to it as the ‘reassembly of
the space station’ because it does
involve a lot of EVAs (spacewalks)
and internal work on (the) wiring
of the space station and moving
(components) around. It’s a lot of
work, and I’ll be involved in all of it.
I really look forward to that, too.”
With their third crew member,
cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, only
staying for six months, and the fact
that the Soyuz spacecraft are only
allowed to stay in orbit for six months,
some creativity was required to
make sure Padalka returned home
before the other two, and that there
was a “fresh” spacecraft for the Year
Long duo to return to mother Earth in.
In steps singer Sarah Brightman,
the first “space tourist” paying for a
ticket to visit the station since 2009.
She will launch on September 1st
along with ESA astronaut Andreas
Mogensen and spacecraft commander Sergei Volkov aboard the
Soyus TMA-18M spacecraft. Upon
docking the trio will boost the stations
occupant count to nine. This will last
for just 10 days however as Brightman
and Mogensen will return to Earth
with Padalka in the TMA-16M spacecraft that he launched in with Kelly
and Kornienko six months earlier. This
will leave the TMA-18M spacecraft in
place and Volkov will be the spacecraft commander when he returns
to earth with Kelly and Kornienko
on March 3, 2016. The mission will
have lasted 341 days if the launch
and landing dates do not change.
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