When Andreas Mogensen arrived at the International Space Station today at 10:15 GMT he had already been awake over 10 hours but had a few tasks on his planning to do.

Unpacking some important items from the Soyuz spacecraft that had bought him to the space was most important, secondary was to get familiar with his temporary home, lastly he was to take a height measurement for the SkinSuit experiment.

JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui. Credits: JAXA/NASA

JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui. Credits: JAXA/NASA

Soyuz commander Sergei Volkov worked together with Andreas to get the bags. Most important was the Endothelial Cells experiment that contains human blood-cells that needed to be put in the Kubik centrifuge-incubator as quickly as possible. Kubik had been warmed up just in time to be at the right temperature to incubate the samples. Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui took over the package from Sergei and Andreas and put them in Kubik without any problem, and all samples are in a cosily warm environment with some floating in weightlessness and others spinning in recreated gravity .

Andreas’s height was measured by NASA astronaut Scott Kelly soon after arrival to see how much he had grown in space without gravity pulling on his spine. His height is needed to judge the effectiveness of the SkinSuit that he will be wearing later in the mission. Measuring his height is done the simple way, Scott tacked a piece of blank paper against a clear wall (or ceiling, or floor – in space it does not matter) at approximately Andreas’s head’s height. While Andreas held his feet down to stop floating away, Scott marked his height on the piece of paper and measured the stripe with a tape measure. Two sets of three measurements were done, one set with Andreas with a full breath of air in his lungs, and one set fully exhaled.

All the urgent items were unpacked as planned and even some of the less urgent – salad rocket seeds for an educational activity for ESA astronaut Timothy Peake who will be visiting the International Space Station in December are now waiting for his arrival.

NASA's Kjell Lindgren. Credits: NASA

NASA’s Kjell Lindgren. Credits: NASA

Andreas completed his third Space Headaches questionnaire – he will complete one a day throughout his mission – while still traveling to the Soyuz. His colleagues on the Space Station NASA’s Kjell Lindgren and Kimiya filled in theirs as well today.

NASA supplied three bags of Space Station waste water that was siphoned off from the system for tomorrow’s Aquamembrane experiment. Tomorrow Andreas will use these bags of water to test a new type of filter that purifies water on a nano-scale in the same way nature does.

Andreas is now in “pre-sleep” on his activity list, which means he is getting ready for bed, brushing his teeth and setting up his sleeping bag in ESA’s Columbus laboratory.