Last week saw Tim Peake working on many Japanese experiments looking at his stomach bacteria as well as recording his cardio-vascular health for the Canadian Space Agency and looking at his eyes for NASA. This week due to combined efforts of Scott Kelly, Tim Kopra and Tim Peake the Japanese Electrostatic Levitation Furnace is ready for prep runs. The machine is melting metals suspended in weightlessness and went through the setup and checkout over the last three weeks.

ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano using the Space Station's freezer for sample storage. Credits: ESA/NASA

ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano using the Space Station’s freezer for sample storage. Credits: ESA/NASA

Monday Tim spent most of his time in the Japanese Kibo laboratory working on Multi-Omics and preparing for future experiments when the next SpaceX cargo vessel arrives. Tuesday morning Tim took a sample of his saliva and stored it in the freezer, swapped some radiation dosimeters and did an eye exam that was operated remotely by doctors on Earth. He did another ultrasound session for Cardio Ox, went for an hour run on the Station’s treadmill and had a video interview, all before lunch. The afternoon was spent in Kibo again and on the spacesuits used for spacewalks.

Meanwhile cosmonauts Mikhail Korniyenko and Sergei Volkov took samples of their blood and handed them to Tim Kopra for storage as part of the EDOS-2 study that is looking at how bones change and recover during and after spaceflight. The samples will also be used for the IMMUNO-2 experiment that is taking a holistic approach to understanding how humans adapt physiologically to living in space.

Tim Peake wearing the Circadian Rhythms' sensors before his spaceflight.

Tim Peake wearing the Circadian Rhythms’ sensors before his spaceflight.

Wednesday 10 February Tim swapped out two more dosimeters, had his weekly ESA crew conference and worked the rest of the day on the spacesuits in addition to his two-hour exercise routine. In the evening Tim donned two special temperature sensors that are part of the Circadian Rhythms experiment that aims to chart how astronauts’ body-clocks adapt to living in space where a typical day includes eight sunrises and sunsets as they orbit Earth. This is Tim’s third session that records his biorhythms for 36 hours at a time.

Thursday ended this session of recording sounds around the Space Station. Tim had been wearing a microphone for 24 hours and had placed two microphones around the Station to record ambient noise. The information will help to localise areas that are too loud. More eye exams and air samples followed by spacesuit checking and a check of emergency equipment such as fire extinguishers and portable breathing assemblies. In the evening Tim did an amateur radio contact with a school in Britain that included video over simple radio waves.

A still from actual 3DVit training. Credits: ESA

A still from actual 3DVit training. Credits: ESA

Tim’s crewmate Tim Kopra used ESA’s 3D-Vit technology to perform maintenance on the European space laboratory Columbus. He was not trained for this operation on purpose but relied on a 3D visualisation of the task and followed the procedures step by step on his tablet.

Friday included a session on Skin-B looking at astronauts’ skin, powering up a centrifuge to spin blood samples before freezing them for storage as well taking a urine sample. These samples are generic ones for data collection and will be repeated on Saturday.

Next week Tim will start preparing for an experiment in the Station’s airlock that is looking at lung function in astronauts among his many other activities.