ISS: Expedition 55

Crew & expedition duration:

Exp.55 crew patch

Complet Exp.55 crew

Backup Crew

EVA data:

Mission details:

Current Spacecraft docking at the ISS. Credit: NASA.

Progress 68 just getting ready to undock as the ISS flies over the Atlantic Ocean.

• ISS Expedition 55 began with the undocking of spacecraft Soyuz MS-06 on February 27, 2018 at 23:08:30 UTC.
• On Mar 13, 2018, an ISS reboost was performed using Progress MS-08 thrusters. This reboost was to set up for Soyuz MS-08 launch planned on March 21, 2018. The engines started at 21:25:54 UTC and fired 108 seconds. The ISS got 0.22 m / sec. more speed. The actual parameters are 403.2 km x 424.3 km. The ISS needs 92.60 minutes for each orbit.
• On Mar 21, 2018 Soyuz MS-08 was launched with Oleg Artemev, Ricky Arnold and Drew Feustel. Following a two-days solo flight, it docked with the Poisk module at 1940 UTC Mar 23 and the three arrivals joined the Ex55 crew as flight engineers.
• On Mar 28, 2018 the Japanese JRMS robot arm was used to move the broken CATS atmosphere observatory from one location to another on the JEM External Facility; a reboot attempt failed, confirming the problem is CATS itself and not the electrical socket.
• On March 28, ISS crewmembers closed the hatch on Progress MS-07 (68P), having removed all its cargo and replaced the cargo with trash and waste items. The Progress ship undocked from the Russian-built Pirs module and was maneuvered into a lower orbit. Russian ground controllers are using the craft for some engineering tests, until they are ready to de-orbit the craft on April 25 and let it burn up over the Pacific Ocean.
• On Mar 29 astronauts Feustel and Arnold, in suits 3006 and 3003, made spacewalk ISS US EVA-49 from the Quest module. They depressurized the airlock at 1325 UTC and opened the hatch at 1329 UTC. The astronauts added radio antennas to the Tranquility module and replaced the ETVCG camera set on P1 truss camera port CP8. The hatch was closed at 1938 UTC and the airlock was repressurized at 1943 UTC.
• With the spacewalk completed, astronauts began preparing for their next visitor. On Apr 2, 2018 the Dragon CRS-14 cargo delivery mission was launched.
  About 10 minutes after launch, Dragon reached its preliminary orbit and deployed its solar arrays. A carefully choreographed series of thruster firings are scheduled to bring the spacecraft to rendezvous with the space station.
• In the CRS-14 trunk were three payloads - MISSE-FF, ASIM and PFCS.
  • MISSE-FF, owned by private company Astra LLC, will be placed at ELC-2 Site 3 to host sample containers which expose various materials to space to see if they are good candidates to be used in building future satellites. Mass may be around 435 kg.
  • ASIM is the ESA Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor, for studying upper-atmosphere electrical discharges. It will go to the Columbus EPF and has a mass of 314 kg
  • PFCS is the Pump Flow Control System, a component of the Station&prme;s cooling system. It will be stored as a spare part outside the station, Mass of a PFCS unit is about 111 kg; this may not include the storage adapter which is probably another 50 kg.
  
  
  

  Dragon capture

  Arnold inside Cupola

  
  
• In CRS-14′s cabin is the 100 kg RemoveDebris payload from Surrey Satellite. It will be deployed from the ISS Kibo module and test technologies for active debris removal. RemoveDebris carries two 2U cubesat subsatellites which it will eject. It will attack one of them with a net and stalk the other one with sensors. It also will put a target card on a 1.5-metre boom and prang it with a tethered harpoon. The idea of RemoveDebris is to test tech for getting rid of space junk.
  The net around the cubesat will act as a drag sail to speed up the satellite′s reentry. The RemoveDebris payload itself carries a DeOrbitSail system to increase drag. The system was tested on a 2015 cubesat with partial success.
• Dragon CRS-14 arrived at the ISS on Apr 4. Scott Tingle and Norishige Kanai captured Dragon using the Canadarm-2 robotic arm (10:40 UTC). Ground controllers then sent commands to robotically install the spacecraft on the station′s Harmony module (13:07 UTC).
• On Apr 6-8 the Canadarm-2 and Dextre robot arms removed the PFCS (Pump Flow Control System) and MISSE-FF payloads from the Dragon trunk.
  MISSE-FF was installed on Express Logistics Carrier 2; the DCSU-2 spare unit was temporarily removed to provide easier access to the install location and reinstalled fterwards.
• On Apr 11 the Canadarm-2 was used to remove the old PFCS (PFCS 3) from the P6 truss segment; it was later moved to Dragon′s trunk for disposal. There were four PFCS on P6, all there since P6 was launched in 2000. In May 2013 during US EVA-21 astronauts moved malfunctioning PFCS 3 from the channel 2B slot and put it in a spare slot, replacinging it with PFCS 1, which had been part of the old EATCS thermal control system. The new PFCS, which label PFCS 12, went in PFCS 3′s old storage slot.
• Also aboard the Dragon, was a Japanese Small Satellite Orbital Deployer (J-SSOD) carrying three cubesats: 1KUNS-PF, a 1U cube for the University of Nairobi, Kenya; the 3U UBAKUSAT for Istanbul Technical University, Turkey; and the 1U Irazu from Tecnologico de Costa Rica. They will be deployed from the Kibo module at a later date.
  
  

  Moon Landscape

  Petr Ginz pasport

  
  
• Andrew Feustel took with him to space a copy of a special drawing entitled "Moon Landscape" which was created by a Jewish Czech boy named Petr Ginz while incarcerated in Terezin, Czechoslovakia, during World War II. The drawing depicts how Earth would look from the surface of the moon. Petr was fascinated by science fiction and inspired by his favorite author, Jules Verne, to draw and write stories about a far off world he would never visit. At the age of 16, Petr lost his life at Auschwitz.
  A replica of the drawing was first flown to space in 2003 by the late Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, whose mother was a Holocaust survivor. Ilan Ramon flew aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia, and in a horrible tragedy, he and his six crew mates lost their lives when the shuttle broke apart during re-entry.
  Holocaust Remembrance Day, recognized on April 12, is a national day of commemoration in Israel, on which those lost in the Holocaust are memorialized. Israel marks this day with ceremonies, and Andrew Feustel also recorded a video message that will be played at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem.
  
  

  Holocaust Remembrance Day

  Dragon undocking

  
  
• On April 18, 2018, an ISS reboost was performed using Progress MS-08 thrusters. This reboost was to set up for Soyuz MS-07 landing planned on June 03, 2018 and Soyuz MS-09 launch planned on June 06, 2018. The engines started at 10:50 UTC and fired 126.5 seconds. The ISS got 0.25 m / sec. more speed. The actual parameters are 403.7 km x 421.9 km. The ISS needs 92.60 minutes for each orbit.
• After delivering more than 5,800 pounds (2,630 kg) of cargo, Dragon CRS-14 returned to Earth on May 05, 2018. The Canadarm-2 released it at 1323 UTC; the deorbit burn as at 1806 UTC and it splashed down at 30 N 123W around 1900 UTC.
• On May 11, 2018 three cubesats were ejected from the J-SSOD-8 deployer carried up on CRS-14; they were described in the last issue. The Costa Rican cubesat Irazu has been renamed Batsu-CS1.
• On May 12, 2018, an ISS reboost was performed using Progress MS-08 thrusters. This reboost was to set up for Soyuz MS-07 landing planned on June 03, 2018 and Soyuz MS-09 launch planned on June 06, 2018. The engines started at 22:07 UTC and fired 172 seconds.
• On May 16, 2018 astronauts Feustel and Arnold conducted spacewalk US EVA-50 in spacesuits 3006 and 3003 (6h 31m). The Quest airlock was depressurized at 1133 UTC and repressurized at 1810 UTC. They moved a component called a Pump Flow Control System (PFCS) from a spare parts platform on the station′s truss "backbone" to the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator (Dextre) robotic arm. The PFCS drives and controls the flow of ammonia through the exterior portions of the station′s cooling system. Robotics controllers on Earth used Canadarm2 and Dextre to perform final installation on the port-side truss for checkout. The spacewalkers removed a failed PFCS and return it to the spare parts depot. They also replaced a camera system on the Destiny Laboratory and a communications receiver.
  As of Apr 11 there were 12 PFCS units on ISS. Each of the solar-panel-bearing segments P4, P6, S4, S6 has two PFCS; in addition P6 has two extra PFCS slots for the Early Active Thermal Control System which operated from 2000 to 2007. One spare unit is stored on External Stowage Platform 1 (ESP1).
  
  

  EVA Feustel

  Soyuz MS-07 undocking

  
  
• During the spacewalk the astronauts moved PFCS4 to ESP-1, exchanging it with PFCS 5 ′Frosty′ which ended up on the EOTP. PFCS 5 was moved the next day to a spare slot in the P6 truss where its functionality could be partially tested.
• In addition to the PFCS work, the EVA-50 crewmembers replaced a camera group on location CP13 and an SGTRC relay box on the Z1 truss.
• The Orbital ATK Cygnus OA-9 mission, SS J.R. Thompson, was launched on May 21, 2018 by Antares from Wallops/MARS. It arrived at ISS on May 24, with Canadarm-2 capture at 0926 UTC and berthing on Unity at 1213 UTC. Cygnus carried about 7,400 pounds (3,350 kg) of science and research to the space station in support of dozens of research investigations, as well as crew supplies and hardware.
  Cygnus carried a physics laboratory to observe atoms in extreme cold and a facility that is the first commercial European opportunity to conduct research in space. Other experiments are advance genetic sequencing of micro-organisms aboard the station and validate a system to extract one liquid from another. The spacecraft also transported several CubeSats to conduct a variety of missions, from Earth science missions and a technology demonstration for laser communications, to mapping a gas surrounding our Milky Way galaxy.
  Included in the cargo in the pressurized area of Cygnus is a centuries-old method of celestial navigation. The Sextant Navigation investigation will explore the use of a hand-held sextant for emergency navigation on missions in deep space as humans look to travel farther from Earth. The ability to sight angles between the Moon or planets and stars offers crews another option to find their way home if communications and main computers are compromised.
  Monitoring crew health and the biological environment of the space station, and understanding long-term effects of space travel on both, are critical to NASA′s plans for long-duration, deep space exploration. The Biomolecule Extraction and Sequencing Technology (BEST) study is the agency′s next step toward advancing in-space DNA sequencing technologies that can identify microbial organisms living on the space station and understanding how the DNA of humans, plants and microbes are affected by microgravity. BEST will use a process that sequences DNA directly from a sample, with minimal preparation, rather than using the traditional technique of growing a culture from the sample.
• Finally the station command changed from Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov to US astronaut Andrew Feustel. On Jun 1, 2018 Feustel took command as Soyuz MS-07 prepared to undock.
  Soyuz MS-07 undocked at 0916 UTC Jun 3 with Shkaplerov, Tingle and Kanai. Feustel, Artemev and Arnold remained aboard ISS as Expedition 56.

External links:

• Wikipedia: Exp. descriptions
• Spacefacts: Exp. description