ISS Operations Update – March 14, 2016

Experiments:

Fine Motor Skills [Fine Motor Skills uses a tablet touchscreen application to monitor degradation in fine motor abilities over the course of an extended exposure to microgravity. A drop in fine motor skills can lead to problems when crew members are tasked with medical treatment, repairing sensitive equipment and interacting with touch-based equipment. Tests utilized by this study include multidirectional pointing, dragging, shape tracing, and object manipulation to create a knowledgebase that will allow scientists to evaluate the risk of fine motor performance decrements due to long-duration exposure to microgravity.]

Microbiome Sampling & Survey Prep [The study will investigate the impact of long duration space flight on both, the human immune system and an individual’s microbiome. The microbiome is the totality of microbes that live in and on the human body at any given time and influence human physiology. Some consider the microbiome to be a “newly discovered organ” due to its importance for human physiology. In fact, there are about 10 times more microbial cells than human cells in and on the human body, but the microbiome only accounts for about 200 grams.]

MAGVECTOR – Experiment run. [The MagVector study is an interesting experiment that will expose a variable electrical conductor to Earth’s magnetic field to study the interaction between the conductor and the magnetic field in a range of different environments using extremely sensitive magnetic sensors installed around the conductor. The experiment will be installed in the European Drawer Rack that will provide a cooled vacuum to have the experiment take place in vacuum conditions. Earth’s magnetic field vector and overall field strength is measured in parallel to provide data for comparisons.]

Systems/Maintenance:

Nominal Inspections/Servicing Tasks (Morning Inspection, Caution & Warning Panel Check, Sozh System Maintenance) (Russian Crew)

Common Communications For Visiting Vehicles (C2V2): Hardware Stow after last-week’s cable and communications unit installation.

WHC Equipment Replacement & Stowage

Payload Data Handling hardware replacement in Kibo

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