André works with one of the experiment racks in the Kibo laboratory (Credit: ESA/NASA)

André works with one of the experiment racks in the Kibo laboratory (Credit: ESA/NASA)

Some last International Space Station maintanence tasks for ESA astronaut André Kuipers before he and fellow crewmates Don Pettit and Oleg Kononenko make the return journey to Earth at the end of their six-month stay.

André writes: “Two more days to go before my stay in space will end. I managed to complete three important tasks before I have to leave. I inspected cooling fluid valves for the Columbus laboratory, fixed an American scientific experiment rack and worked on the Japanese Ryutai rack. We do many maintenance tasks in the ISS. Maintenance must be done in a timely fashion to assure that the Space Station is used optimally for our scientific experiments.”

Read more in André’s blog: ‘Checking water valves and another false alarm’