Spring clean for ISS to end in sleep experiment
Published 30 April, 2009, 11:49
The crew of the International Space Station has dedicated a day to moving cargo around. They are to tidy up the station ahead of the arrival of a cargo spacecraft in May.
ISS commander Gennady Padalka and flight engineer Michael Barratt are loading defunct equipment and other junk into Progress M-66, which is currently docked with the station. On May 6, it will be de-orbited and reenter the earth’s atmosphere, ending up in the Pacific Ocean, according to spokesman for the flight control centre near Moscow Valery Lyndin.
The work is to make room for the cargo of Progress M-02M, which the spacecraft will take into orbit on May 7. The load includes food and water to be stored before the crew is increased to six people, when Expedition 20 members Roman Romanenko, Frank De Winne and Robert Thirsk arrive at the station.
Cosmonauts will receive personal packages and some special food they’ve ordered on Earth. For example, Padalka asked for a kilo of onions and a kilo of garlic, which will help him to deal with homesickness, told journalists chief of nutrition department at the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems (IMBP), Aleksandr Agureev. The crew commander will also get something to treat colleagues on his birthday in June with fruits and chocolate.
A small but special package on the Progress contains three St. George ribbons, which crew members are to wear on Victory day. The striped orange and black ribbons are worn by many Russians to commemorate victims of World War II and praise the heroism of those who fought Nazi troops.
When the sweat dries on the space dockworkers brows they’ll have a hard-earned right for sleep. However, it won’t be just some ordinary snooze we earthmen have, but will rather be part of their scientific program. In the experiment a small device will record each of the cosmonaut’s biorhythms when sleeping in zero-g so that they can be compared later with normal earthbound sleep data.
The trick of the experiment was to make sure the recorder was small enough to be used on the ISS, said IMBP specialist Anna Chernikova. Equipment used routinely on sleep research institutions is much larger and would be too awkward and costly to use in orbit. The device will be later used to monitor the health condition of crew members during spacewalks or experiments needed to prepare for a mission to Mars.
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