Tag Archives: Dan Burbank

New blog from André: ‘Bye bye Dan, Anton and Anatoli. See you on Earth’

Farewells as the departing crew enter their Soyuz spacecraft to return to Earth

André Kuipers sent a new blog entry reflecting on the undocking of the Soyuz TMA-22 last Friday. On board the departing spacecraft were NASA astronaut Dan Burbank and Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoli Ivanishin, who safely landed in the Kazakh Steppe some three and a half hours after the undocking. He writes:

"Yesterday Dan, Anton and Anatoli left. We worked all night. I drew blood from Don and myself and collected saliva samples to be sent back on the the Soyuz to the scientists on Earth. Around six o’clock in the morning Western European time we said our goodbyes. At ten to seven we closed the hatch to their Soyuz. At exactly 10:18:30 they detached from the ISS to travel back to Earth. I heard the latches release and felt a small shock when springs pushed the Soyuz away. A little later I saw the Soyuz descend on its way to to a safe landing in the Kazakh Steppe, a little before two o’clock in the afternoon."

Read the full post in André's blog: Bye bye Dan, Anton and Anatoli. See you on Earth

Video replay: Soyuz TMA-22 lands safely in Kazakhstan

Some three and a half hours after undocking from the International Space Station, the Soyuz TMA-22 landed safely in the Kazakh Steppe at 13:45 CEST (11:45 UT). On board were Dan Burbank, Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoli Ivanishin who returned to Earth after just over five months in space.

Watch the replay from NASA TV:

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Soyuz crew preparing to depart ISS

ISS crewmembers Dan Burbank, Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoli Ivanishin are preparing to return to Earth. They entered their Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft earlier this morning. The hatches to the International Space Station were closed at 7:12 CEST and they will undock from the ISS at 10:18 CEST (08:18 UT), landing in the Kazakh Steppe some three and a half hours later.

The undocking of the Soyuz marks the official start of Expedition 31 for the crew remaining on the Station: Station Commander Oleg Kononenko and Flight Engineers Don Pettit and André Kuipers. In mid-May they will be joined by Flight Engineers Gennady Padalka, Joe Acaba and Sergei Revin who will launch and arrive in the Soyuz TMA-04M spacecraft.

Follow the undocking live on NASA TV from 10:00 CEST (08:00 UT): http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

Tour the ISS science laboratories with Dan Burbank

Expedition 30 Commander Dan Burbank recently recorded this tour of the US segment of the International Space Station, highlighting some of the science facilities and equipment on board the orbiting laboratory. The tour starts in the Japanese Kibo laboratory, moves onto the European Columbus laboratory and finally to the US Destiny laboratory.

Your house is nice and warm in winter? Your body nice and warm as well….

An update from ESA's Mission Science Office who support ESA's science programme on the International Space Station. A look at the THERMOLAB experiment for which Expedition 30 crewmembers, André Kuipers, Don Pettit and Dan Burbank have recently completed experiment sessions in orbit.

Isn’t it amazing how the thermal control system can keep your house (hopefully) warm enough when temperatures outdoors drop below freezing? You set the temperature you want and sensors use that setting to decide when to heat.

At least as amazing is the thermal control in your body. The human body regulates its core temperature to ensure that the temperature for the vital organs is continuously at 37° C. Whether it freezes like recent winter weeks or whether you are lying on the beach in summer, your body is always able to keep your brain, heart, liver and kidneys and other core organs at this temperature. Sweating and shivering are two of the mechanisms that help your body’s thermoregulatory system maintain its temperature.

André during a THERMOLAB session, note the sensor attached to his forehead

But what happens with the thermoregulatory system when you arrive in microgravity? It is not at all logical that it behaves the same as on Earth since, for example, the body fluids shift upward due to the absence of gravity. Without convection, sweating is no longer an efficient method of cooling down the body temperature – without gravity, warm air no longer rises up, cooling the skin in the process.

The THERMOLAB experiment looks at the changes in the thermoregulatory system in microgravity. It investigates how the body heats up during, and cools down after, exercise in microgravity. The measurements in space are then compared with those measured on the ground on the same crewmember before and after the mission.

For this experiment, André and his colleagues measure their body skin temperature during strenuous exercise, using two body temperature sensors positioned on the forehead (see image of André - for the purpose of this experiment, a newly developed thermo-sensor is used) and chest. The crewmembers are asked to exercise as hard as they can (as part of a NASA experiment called VO2max) – and will definitely sweat when performing the test – their heart rate, bicycle data and the amount of inhaled and exhaled oxygen helps the THERMOLAB science team to precisely analyse the body temperature curve.

Recently André and his colleague Don performed their third inflight session. Their colleague Dan has already completed four sessions. They do these measurements more or less once per month, to see how the thermoregulatory system evolves during their long-term stay on-orbit. Thanks guys, keep on exercising and acquiring valuable science data!

Very last inflight session for European PASSAGES experiment completed

Great news today from ESA’s Mission Science Office (MSO) – a milestone passed this week with the completion of the very last inflight session of PASSAGES, one of the European science experiments on the International Space Station. The following update was received from the MSO:

When you approach a door or any other opening, do you have any idea how your brain actually manages to decide whether you can pass through it? Obviously you do not carry around a ruler to measure how wide the opening is and then calculate and compare with your shoulder width. Your brain is apparently smarter than that! But how?

NASA astronaut Mike Fossum performing the PASSAGES experiment in the Columbus module

The PASSAGES experiment being done on-board the ISS is all about the strategies our brain uses in the perception of the world around us. In this experiment, we want to know if the strategies involved on Earth continue to be used when the astronaut is in a weightless environment for a long period.

In particular, we would like to know whether the fact that astronauts spend most of their time floating has an effect on their ability to judge distances and sizes, based on visual information alone. Does the lack of weight, and the lack of contact with the world generate visual illusions or errors in perception? Previous experiments on the ground and in parabolic flight suggest that it might.

To investigate this question, the participating crew members see 3D scenes on a laptop screen, just like a video game. The scene is a room with an opening which can vary in width. Their task is to decide if he or she could pass through the aperture without rotating or scrunching the shoulders.

The science team uses typical methods from psychophysics and manipulates several factors to investigate the strategies used by the participant. The science team will compare the performances obtained on ground with those obtained on-board the ISS. From that, the team will be able to conclude whether Earth-adapted strategies lead to modifications or maybe even errors in the perception of visual space during spaceflight.

JAXA astronaut Satoshi Furukawa performing the PASSAGES experiment in the Columbus module

André’s colleague Dan Burbank has performed his final PASSAGES session this week. With nine other crew members having previously participated in the experiment, Dan has concluded all in-flight activities for the PASSAGES experiment.

Of course Dan will still be doing some measurement sessions on-ground after his return to Earth. Nevertheless the champagne was set cold in the CADMOS User Support & Operations Centre where the science team was following this very last in-flight session for this experiment.

Congratulations to all involved on the completion of PASSAGES inflight activities! Looking forward to the scientific results and publications!

Discussing life in space with students

During a week so far dominated by routine inspection and maintenance tasks for the International Space Station crew, ISS Commander Dan Burbank and Flight Engineer André Kuipers took time out to answer questions put to them by students in New Jersey, USA.

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Robonaut awakened on ISS

André with Robonaut

The International Space Station's seventh crewmember, a dextrous humanoid robot called Robonaut 2, was powered up for testing yesterday.

ESA astronaut André Kuipers assisted ISS Commander Dan Burbank with the assembly and power up of Robonaut. Together with ground controllers, Burbank tested Robonaut’s joints and force sensors before stowing the robot for more testing today.

NASA's Robonaut is in a demonstration phase, but eventually robots could relieve crew of tasks which are fairly repetitive and can be automated. Crew time on the ISS is an extremely scare resource, freeing up some of their time spent on simple tasks would mean more time for those tasks that require human skills and reasoning.

Robonaut is activated

Another advantage of robots is that they can move with extremely low acceleration - crew activity within a Station laboratory can disrupt the environment when an experiment is being conducted. Robots could one day venture outside the Station to help spacewalkers make repairs or additions to the Station or perform scientific work.

Within ESA there are also several robotics projects lead by the Automation and Robotics group. They are working on projects such as the EUROBOT testbed for use in low Earth orbit - for the building and operating the International Space Station, and other technologies for the exploration of the Solar System, such as rovers for the Moon, Mars, asteroids and comets.

More on the ESA Automation and Robotics group website

Find out more about Robonaut in this clip from NASA TV:

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A bit of extra salt on your food, André? Astronauts’ bones say please don’t

Starting on Sunday ESA astronaut André Kuipers and his NASA colleague Dan Burbank will eat a special diet for ESA’s SOdium LOad in microgravity (SOLO) experiment for two periods of five days. Find out more about SOLO and what it can help us to learn in this blog contribution from ESA’s Mission Science Office:

Paolo Nespoli takes a body mass measurement

Osteoporosis is a harsh disease that reduces the quality of life for millions and costs Europe around €25 billion each year. It typically affects the elderly so the rise in life expectancy in developed countries means the problems inflicted by osteoporosis are increasing.

Fortunately, research done in space may change the game. Astronauts on the International Space Station experience accelerated osteoporosis because of weightlessness, but it is carefully controlled and they can regain their lost bone mass once back on Earth. Studying what happens during long spaceflights offers a good insight into the process of osteoporosis – losing calcium and changing bone structure – and helps to develop methods to combat it.

It has been known since the 1990s that the human body holds on to sodium, without corresponding water retention, during long stays in space. But the textbooks said this was not possible. ‘Sodium retention in space’ became an important subject to study.

NASA Human Research Facilities in European Columbus laboratory

Salt intake is being investigated in a series of studies, in ground-based simulations and now also in space, and it was found that not only is sodium retained (probably in the skin), but it also affects the acid balance of the body and bone metabolism. So, high salt intake increases acidity in the body which can accelerate bone loss.

ESA’s SOLO experiment zooms in on this question. André and his colleague Dan Burbank will be starting two diet sessions coming Sunday 29 January. For both diet sessions, they will eat exactly what is laid out for them in a menu. Luckily they had their say beforehand on-ground in what they liked and disliked. But what they will be eating in these diet sessions for two periods of five days is exactly prescribed in terms of calories and nutrients. One session has a normal salt level (11.5 g salt per day), the other session a low salt level (2.9 g salt per day).

During these diet sessions, the crewmembers take measurements and collect samples from their own body, i.e. blood and urine. These measurements and samples allow the science team to analyse certain hormones, bone formation markers and many other parameters to tell the impact on their body and bones of the salt level in their food.

André works with the MELFI freezer

They will take a body mass measurement, not obvious in microgravity as one can imagine (see photo of Paolo Nespoli). They will collect urine samples – not simple either to collect in space – and they will draw venous and fingertip blood samples. The ESA and NASA crewmember will use the NASA Human Research Facilities in European Columbus laboratory to do these measurements (see photo) and collect their samples in the MELFI freezer in the Japanese module (see photo). Urine and blood samples will later be returned to Earth on a Russian Soyuz vehicle. A true International Space Station experiment!

Enjoy the food, Dan & André!

Expedition 30 chats with US media

Two weeks into their space mission, International Space Station Expedition 30 crewmembers ESA astronaut André Kuipers and NASA astronauts Dan Burbank and Don Pettit took part in an interview with two US media outlets earlier today.

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Credit: NASA TV