NASA logo. Graphic/PR Newswire
NASA television aired the undocking of ISS Progress 55 from the International Space Station Monday, as well as the docking of the cargo ship’s replacement, scheduled for Wednesday night.
Progress 55, which has been docked with the ISS since April, will depart the station at 5:41 p.m. EDT (coverage 5:30 p.m.) and go through several days of engineering tests before executing an order to return to Earth’s atmosphere. Upon reentry, it will burn up over the Pacific Ocean.
It’s replacement, ISS Progress 56, will launch Wednesday from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 5:44 p.m. (coverage 5:30 p.m.). The resupply ship, which contains 5,700 pounds of food, fuel and supplies for the six-man international crew carrying out Expedition 40 aboard the ISS, will orbit the Earth four times during its six hour trip before docking with the ISS at 11:28 p.m. (coverage 11 p.m.).
Expedition 40
Expedition 40 began May 13 and ends September 10. The Americans aboard include Commander Steve Swanson and Flight Engineer Reid Wiseman. Expedition 40 represents the fourth mission for Swanson, a native of Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Expeditions 40 and 41 are the first missions for Wiseman of Baltimore.
According to NASA, key objectives for the crew include completing one equipment installation and three experiments.
The crew will install a Rapid Scatterometer on the ISS. This instrument uses radar pulses reflected from the ocean’s surface to measure wind speed and direction, useful for tracking hurricanes and other weather patterns. The device will also be used to cross check the readings of other scatterometers and enable monitoring of different parts of the planet at different times.
Three crewmembers will perform an experiment assessing the effects of communications delay on crewmembers who would be operating in more remote locations of space further from Earth. The crewmembers will perform a series of eight tasks with and without a 50 second delay. The tasks, which vary in familiarity and level of stress caused, will help determine ways to improve communications procedures with astronaut teams operating in deep space.
A second experiment tests the functionality of new rodent research hardware. Rodent testing in space provides insights for human spaceflight, basic biology and Earth-based medical research. The transporter, habitat and access unit will be evaluated.
Crewmembers will evaluate the XSENS ForceShoe, a platform which measures forces and torques on the foot. As many as four astronauts will conduct load tests on the equipment. The data will be used for human research and also applied to those that have exercise restrictions caused by factors such as injury, age and lifestyle.
The maneuvers can be viewed on NASA TV.
