Flight day 3 schedule

European Columbus laboratory on International Space Station. Credits: ESA

Tomorrow Andreas Mogensen will arrive at the International Space Station at around 07:42 GMT with the hatches between the two spacecraft opening at around 10:15 GMT.

As with all Soyuz flights the new crew will have a chance to talk to press and family followed by a midday meal at around 11:00 GMT.

One of the first tasks to do is putting the live blood-vessel cells that flew with Andreas on the Soyuz as part of the Endothelial Cells experiment into their incubator-centrifuge Kubik. Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui will take care of this operation while Andreas takes care of other unpacking from the Soyuz.

Together with Soyuz commander Sergei Volkov Andreas will unpack the most important experiments, Aquamembrane, Bistro and Demes, radiation monitor EuCPAD, SkinSuit and MobiPV. EuCPAD will be placed in ESA’s Columbus laboratory where it will stay and monitor radiation levels throughout the iriss mission – it requires no further attention.

Endothelial cells stained in laboratory. In RED: actin labeled with Phalloidin-550 (Cytoskeleton, USA); in BLUE: nuclear DNA stained with DAPI (Sigma-Aldrich, USA). Credits: Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy

If time permits Andreas will do a first stature measurement for the SkinSuit experiment with Sergei Volkov helping him. His body-height is needed to measure the effectiveness of the SkinSuit that hopes to alleviate backpain – astronauts can grow up to seven cm in weightlessness.

In addition to all this Andreas has a few sessions to familiarise himself with the International Space Station, a safety briefing and his daily crew conference with ESA mission control at 15:10 GMT.

The Soyuz crew will be up from 23:30 GMT the day before docking so the long day for them will start to wind down around from 16:35 GMT with sleep scheduled for 18:00 GMT – nobody will hold it against him if he stays up a bit longer to soak in the sights and new experience.