Space to Ground: At the Half: July 7, 2023

NASA's Space to Ground is your weekly update on what's happening aboard the International Space Station.

What is said in the film

Welcome to space to ground. I am nilufar ramji. Its hard to belive, but we are halfway through with nine spacewalks, two crews, one private astronaut mission and let’s not forget all the science and research. The space station crews have been hard at work making history. Welcome to our halftime show!

The first half of this year has welcomed 15 individuals to the space station including american, emirati, japanese, russian, and saudi crew members. Just before crew 5 returned home, nasa’s spacex crew-6 mission launched to the space station on march 2, taking four new crew members to the orbiting laboratory. Crew-6’s science mission includes cutting edge research aimed at keeping astronauts and spacecraft safe during deep space exploration, and studies that could lead to improved medical treatments for humans back on earth. Crew-6 remains onboard and will come home following an approximate 6-month stay. For more than 22 years, nasa has supported a continuous u.

s. Human presence in low earth orbit. The agency's goal is a low earth orbit marketplace where nasa is one of many customers, and the private sector is leading the way. Nasa, axiom space, and spacex launched axiom mission 2, the second private astronaut mission to the international space station, on may 21. The crew stayed on the space station for eight days, performing experiments and outreach, before returning to earth.

This year, astronauts continued work that began in 2021 as they installed the fifth and sixth international space station roll out solar arrays, or irosas, in a series of spacewalks. The new arrays are 60 feet long by 20 feet wide and will shade a little more than half of the original arrays, which are 112 feet long by 39 feet wide. The seventh and eighth irosas will be installed on future spacewalks. Each new irosa will produce more than 20 kilowatts of electricity, and once all eight are installed, will enable a 30% increase in power production over the station’s current arrays. Operational activities aren’t the only highlights this year.

Researchers announced the achievement of 98% water recovery in the us segment of the space station, the ideal recovery needed for life support systems on long-duration missions beyond low earth orbit. In march, the crew harvested dwarf tomatoes in the station’s veggie facility as a part of the veg-05 experiment to examine the effects of light quality and fertilizer on fruit production, microbial safety, and nutritional value. The station’s biofabrication facility also returned this year with upgrades. During its first trip to space in 2019, the facility successfully printed a partial human knee meniscus and a large volume of human heart cells. The new capabilities aim to further human tissue printing research to help alleviate organ shortages for patients in need of transplants by printing replacement organs and tissues.

And if you think that was a lot, the second half of 2023 will be just as exciting. We have more spacewalks and cargo missions ahead, along with the launch of spacex crew-7 and soyuz ms-24. Later this year, nasa astronaut frank rubio along with russian cosmonauts, sergey prokopyev and dmitri petelin will hit the 365 day mark on sept. 21. They are scheduled to return home in late september, with rubio as the new american record holder for the longest single spaceflight.

And that’s a wrap for our halftime report. Keep following along on social media and here for all the activities taking place aboard the orbiting lab. Thanks for watching. We will see you next week.

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