ISS: Expedition 51

Crew & expedition duration:

Exp.51 crew patch

Complet Exp.51 crew

Backup Crew

Mission details:

• Expedition 51 began with the undocking of Soyuz MS-02 from Poisk on Apr 10, 2017 at 07:57 UT, returing Ryzhikov, Borisenko and Kimbrough to Earth. Peggy Whitson became ISS commander of Expedition 51. Soyuz MS-03 is docked at Rassvet. Progress MS-05 is docked at Pirs.
• On Apr 15, 2017 the crew on the International Space Station (ISS) has successfully replaced a window pane on the Cupola module. The operation was conducted without any risk to the crew, thanks to the innovative design on the module′s windows, which involves four panes allowing for internal replacement while risking no pressure loss for the Station.
• On Apr 18, 2017 Cygnus mission OA-7, the S.S. John Glenn, was launched on ULA Atlas AV-070 from Cape Canaveral. The 7221 kg cargo ship carries about 140 kg of small satellites for later deployment and about 3250 kg of other cargo.
  Investigations onboard include an Advanced Plant Habitat, which will integrate new technology to increase overall efficiency, reliability, and robustness of plants grown on station. This experiment will build on the success of NASA′s Veggie, the first fresh food growth system on station, and will provide ongoing research for the development of food production systems for long-duration exploration missions.
  Manipulating cell cultures in space is challenging as the cells can spontaneously grow in 3-D. Another new investigation bound for the U.S. National Laboratory will look at using magnetized cells and tools to make it easier to handle cells and cultures, and improve the reproducibility of experiments.
  The Slosh Coating experiment will investigate a special type of coating that can repel liquids when applied to container walls. If effective, the liquid repellent could be used to design more efficient storage tanks for propellant and other fluids used in space exploration.
  There also will be a number of CubeSats onboard Cygnus that will be deployed from the NanoRacks CubeSat Deployment on the space station, including a NASA science payload known as IceCube, which will provide data to scientists′ understanding of ice clouds and their role in climate change.
  The International Space Station is a convergence of science, technology and human innovation that demonstrates new technologies and makes research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. The space station has been occupied continuously since November 2000. In that time, more than 200 people and a variety of international and commercial spacecraft have visited the orbiting laboratory. The space station remains the springboard to NASA′s next great leap in exploration, including future missions to an asteroid and Mars.
• On Apr 20, 2017 Soyuz MS-04 was launched from Baikonur and docked with the Poisk module 6hr 4min later. Soyuz commander was Fyodor Yurchikin and flight engineer was Jack Fischer. This was the first two-person Soyuz mission in 14 years (Soyuz TMA-2 in Apr 2003), as Russia scales back its ISS crew pending completion of the delayed Nauka module. With the arrival Expedition 51 became a five-person-crew.
• When Cygnus arrived to the space station on Apr 22, 2017, Peggy Whitson and Thomas Pesquet used the space station′s robotic arm, Canadarm2, to take hold of the spacecraft. After Canadarm2 captured Cygnus (10:05 UTC), ground commands were sent for the station′s arm to rotate and installed it on the bottom of the station′s Unity module (12:39 UTC).
  
  

  Cygnus OA-7 grapple

  Meal on board

  
  Cygnus will remain on the station until July 2017, when it will depart with several tons of trash for a fiery reentry into Earth′s atmosphere. Prior to re-entry, a third experiment to test will be conducted to study how fire burns in space.
• On Apr 27, 2017, an ISS reboost was performed using module Zvezda thrusters. This reboost was to set up for Soyuz MS-03 landing planned on June 02, 2017. The engines started at 05:10 UTC and fired 30 seconds. The ISS got 0.46 m / sec more speed. The actual parameters are 403.64 km x 426.8 km. The ISS needs 92.61 minutes for each orbit.
• On May 4 to 6 the SSRMS and SPDM robot arms were used to exchange the MBSU (Main Bus Switching Unit) No. 2 on the S0 truss with a spare stored on ESP-2. The old MBSU was launched with S0 in 2002; the spare was launched with ESP-2 in 2005.
  
  

  EVA Whitson

  EVA Fischer

  
  
• On May 12, 2017 astronauts Whitson and Fischer performed spacewalk US EVA-42.
  (4h 13m). One of the two SCU (Service and Cooling Umbilicals) in the Quest airlock developed a leak. The SCUs provide power and oxygen during spacewalk preps; the astronauts took turns using the one working one, but that meant less battery power was available during the actual EVA. Whitson went onto battery power at 12:22 UTC; airlock depressurization began about 12:30 UTC and reached 50 mbar at 13:03 UTC. At 13:06 UTC the hatch was opened, and at 13:08 UTC Fischer went on to battery power.
  The astronauts went to Express Logistics Carrier 4 (ELC-4) on the S3 truss. ELC-4 was launched in Feb 2011; its ExPCA (Express Pallet Controller Assembly, basically the pallet's computer) has failed. The astronauts replaced it with a new ExPCA launched on OA-7 and brought the old one back to the airlock. Also launched on OA-7 was the PMA-3 forward shield, which they installed at the base of PMA-3. The astronauts entered Quest and closed the hatch at 17:14 UTC; Quest was depressurized starting at 17:21 UTC. This was the 200th ISS spacewalk
  
  

  EVA worksites on May 12

  
  
• On May 17, 2017, an ISS reboost was performed using module Zvezda thrusters. This reboost was to set up for Soyuz MS-03 landing planned on June 02, 2017. The engines started at 22:15 UTC and fired 13 seconds. The ISS got 0.2 m / sec more speed.
• On May 23, 2017 Whitson and Fischer headed out again on EVA-43 (2h 46m), two days after the new MDM EXT-1 computer on the S0 truss, installed Mar 30, unexpectedly failed. The box is one of the station's two external MDMs that provide commands to some of the space station's systems, including the external cooling system, solar alpha rotary joints (SARJ) and mobile transporter rail car. The multiplexer-demultiplexer (MDM) is 27 x 42 centimeters in diameter and has a mass of 23 kilograms. The astronauts brought out a spare computer and swapped it with the failed one. Jack Fischer installed a pair of antennas on the U.S. Destiny Laboratory module to enhance wireless communication capability for future spacewalks.
• Between May 16 and May 18, 17 cubesats were deployed from the Nanoracks NRCSD-11 dispenser attached to the JEM RMS robot arm on Kibo. On May 24 the dispensers were swapped out in the Kibo airlock and between May 25 and May 26 a further 17 cubesats were deployed from NRCSD-12. Twenty-eight of these cubesats were part of the QB50 mission led by Belgium's Von Karman Institute (VKI), and carry sensors (mass spectrometer, flux probe, Langmuir probe) to study the upper atmosphere.
• The cubesats deployed were:

    May 16 0825   SOMP-2          2U QB50-DE02, TU Dresden
                  Havelsat        2U QB50-TR02, from the Turkish company HAVELSAN A.S. and Istanbul Tech U.
                  Columbia Sat    2U QB50-US04, part of the QBUS quartet, from Univ. Turabo, Puerto Rico
    May 16 1155   KySat-3/SGSAT   1U cubesat with a stellar gyroscope experiment from KentuckySpace.
                  CXBN 2          2U cubesat with X-ray astronomy experiment from Morehead State U, Kentucky
                  IceCube         3U cubesat from NASA-Goddard to test an 874GHz submm receiver for 
                                  mapping atmospheric ice (not to be confused with the Cornell cubesats 
                                  IceCube-1 and 2, lost in a 2006 launch failure)
    May 17 0145   Phoenix         2U QB50-TW01, from National Chen Kung Univ in Tainan City, Taiwan
                  X-Cubesat       2U QB50-FR01, from the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris
                  qbee50-LTU-OC   2U QB50-SE01, from Lulea Technical University in Lulea, Sweden and OpenCosmos 
                                                 in Didcot, Oxfordshire.
    May 17 0813   Altair          An unusual cubesat 6U long (0.1 x 0.1 x 0.6m) to test the Altair spacecraft bus
                                  for Millenium Space Systems of California.
    May 17 1240   SHARC           SHARC is a radar calibration satellite for the US Air Force Research Lab;
                                  different sources give it as 1x5U or 1x6U. 
    May 18 0100   ZA-Aerosat      2U QB50-AZ01, from Cubespace in Stellenbosch, S. Africa, a spinoff
                                  company from Stellenbosch University which built 2 previous South African sats. 
                  LINK            2U QB50-KR01, from the KAIST space research institute in South Korea.
    May 18 0415   CSUNSat 1       A 2U cubesat from California State Univ. Northridge, with a JPL low temperature
                                  energy storage experiment.
    May 18 0825   UPSat           2U QB50-GR02, from the University of Patras in Greece.
                  SpaceCube       2U QB50-FR05, from the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines in Paris.
                  Hoopoe          2U QB50-IL01, from Herzliya Science Center in Israel
    May 25 0525   Challenger Sat  2U QB50-US01, a QBUS satellite from the University of Colorado.
                  NJUST-1         2U QB50-CN03, from Nanjing University of Science and Technology and VKI.
                  USNW-EC0        2U QB50-AU02, from the University of New South Wales in Sydney.
    May 25 0835   DUTHSat         2U QB50-GR01, from the Democritus University of Thrace in Greece.
                  Zidingxiang-1   2U QB50-CN02, also called LilacSat-1, from Harbin Inst. of Technology, Manchuria.
                  nSIGHT 1        2U QB50-AZ02, from SCS-Space of Cape Town, South Africa.
    May 25 1155   QBITO           2U QB50-ES01, from Universita Politecnica de Madrid.
                  Aalto-2         2U QB50-FI01, from Aalto Univ. in Finland
                  SUSat           2U QB50-AU01, from the Univ. of Adelaide
    May 25 2340   SNUSAT 1b       2U QB50-KR03, from Seoul National University
    May 26 0400   i-INSPIRE 2     2U QB50-AU03, from the Univ. of Sydney
                  PolyITAN-2-SAU  2U QB50-UA01, from Kiev Polytechnical Institute
                  SNUSAT 1        2U QB50-KR02, from Seoul National University
    May 26 0855   Ex-Alta 1       2U QB50-CA03, from the Univ. of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta
    May 26 1215   Aoxiang 1       2U QB50-CN04, from Shaanxi Engineering Laboratory for Microsatellites in Xi'an
                  BeEagleSat      2U QB50-TR01, from Istanbul Tech U. and the Turkish AF Academy
                  Atlantis Sat    2U QB50-US02, a QBUS collaboration satellite from the U. of Michigan.
  

  
  
  

  Cubesats deployement

  EVA Fischer

  
  
  

  ISS Biolab

  Salad on ISS

  
  
• In addition, the US DoD/Australian DoD technology cubesat Biarri Point is reported to have been carried to the ISS on OA-7; it is not clear whether or not the satellite is still on ISS or was deployed clandestinely.
• On Jun 2, 2017 astronauts Novitskiy and Pesquet transferred to Soyuz MS-03 and undocked from the Rassvet module at 10:47 UTC. This was the end of Exp.51. After a deorbit burn at 1317 UTC they landed in Kazakhstan at 1410 UTC.

External links:

• Wikipedia: Exp. descriptions
• Spacefacts: Exp. description

Astrophilately covers:

Cosmic Mail: Bleu ISS boardcancel and special Mir-date 04 04 17 cancel, Cygnus 7 docking cancel Moscou. - Credit: #417

200th Spacewalk - EVA-42

ISS Spacewalk EVA-43 - manuel cancel