Space Crops and Advanced Tech Wrap Up Week Following Spacewalk
Space crops research wrapped up the week following the completion of the first of two power upgrade spacewalks at the International Space Station. The Expedition 75 crew members rounded out their research schedule with virtual reality and super intelligence studies. The post Space Crops and Advanced Tech Wrap Up Week Following Spacewalk appeared first on NASA Science .
On Thursday, Expedition 75 flight engineers Joshua Kutryk from the Canadian Space Agency and Jessica Watkins of NASA wrapped up the week with a spacesuit fit check inside the International Space Station’s Quest airlock. The first of two power upgrade spacewalks at the orbital outpost concluded the crew's research schedule, focusing on virtual reality and super intelligence studies.
The crew installed a new roll-out solar array, powered by the recent addition of a roll-out solar array, during a seven-hour and 11-minute spacewalk. The installation process involved attaching the solar array to the port side truss structure and allowing it to unfurl over a ten-minute period. This addition will increase the station’s power generating capacity from 160 kilowatts to approximately 215 kilowatts.
On Friday, the crew had a light duty day, with Kutryk conducting a space botany investigation in the Kibo laboratory module. The study explores how microgravity affects cell division on green algae and cultured tobacco cells, which could potentially support food crop production on the Moon and Mars. Kutryk also participated in a virtual reality exercise aboard the European Enhanced Exploration Exercise Device (E4D) being tested for its ability to keep crews fit during long-term spaceflight.
Meanwhile, NASA flight engineer Luke Delaney studied space-based crops, focusing on preventing plant diseases in microgravity. Delaney inoculated thale cress plant samples that had been exposed to a fungal pathogen, stowing the samples inside an artificial gravity-generating incubator for further analysis. Additionally, Watkins spent her shift servicing various research hardware, including removing and photographing components inside a device that powers experiments launched aboard spacecraft.
She also swapped moisture absorbers inside portable science freezers, which can be launched to the station and returned to Earth to house frozen research samples for analysis.
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