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Josh Byerly: Welcome to Space To Ground, your weekly look at what’s happening on board
the ISS. I’m Josh Byerly.
This past weekend, the station crew sent down some congratulations to the cast and crew
of the movie Gravity.
Astronaut Rick Mastracchio: We want to congratulate the entire production and directing team and
the stars of Gravity for the honors they have earned from the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences.
Byerly: And speaking of gravity, three crew members are about to experience it for the
first time in months. Mike Hopkins, Sergei Ryazanskiy and Oleg Kotov will be returning
to Earth on Monday. Landing time is set for 11:24 p.m. Eastern, and we’ll have live
coverage on NASA television and nasa.gov at the times you see here. The weather at the
landing site in Kazakhstan is expected to be bitterly cold with a whole lot of snow
on the ground.
The crew did a lot of work this week with SPHERES Slosh.
As rockets have gotten much bigger and more complex over the years, it’s become a bit
tricky to predict how all that fuel in the rocket tanks will move around. So SPHERES
Slosh is helping out. The crew used two of the SPHERES satellites on board, along with
some green liquid in the middle. As the satellites fly, the liquid sloshes around and is photographed
by high resolution cameras. This will ultimately help create better and safer designs for future
rockets.
The crew also worked on the Microbiome experiment. This may sound weird, but there are actually
whole colonies of microbes growing on our bodies….and there are good ones and bad
ones.
When we’re under stress, the balance of the two can get out of hand, which can lead
to disease. Living in space definitely puts stress on the body, so astronauts’ microbes
are sampled as part of this study. The hope is that this will lead to better detection
of diseases and a better understanding of our immune system.
This week’s social media question is from Stephen Smith. He asks if all crew members
have access to all parts of ISS?
Yes they do. there are Russian, U.S., European and Japanese laboratories on board that all
of the crewmembers work in each day. When it comes time to eat, the crew can meet up
in the Unity node, which is where the American segment meets the Russian segment. The crew
also exercise throughout the station, both in the U.S. and Russian segments.
Make sure to keep sending us your questions and comments using the hashtag #spacetoground.
We’ll see you next week.