Cygnus Departure Preparations: The crew completed cargo closeout ops, egressed the vehicle and removed utility jumpers and installed required hardware prior to Cygnus vestibule depressurization and demate. The crew also installed the SlingShot brackets and deployers over the hatch area on the Cygnus vehicle in preparation for small satellite deploy following release which is scheduled tomorrow, August 6, at 11:15 AM CT.

BFF (BioFabrication Facility) Test Print: Over the weekend the crew cleaned up the BFF print volume to recover from the unintended material release which occurred late last week. Today the crew performed the cassette installations, swaps and removals to support the BFF science print with cells. Some difficulties were reported by the ground team involving several of the smart pumps used in the printing operations and activities were altered to accommodate. A forward plan is in work. Using 3D biological printers to produce usable human organs has long been a dream of scientists and doctors around the globe. However, printing the tiny, complex structures found inside human organs, such as capillary structures, has proven difficult to accomplish in Earth’s gravity environment. To overcome this challenge, Techshot designed their BFF to print organ-like tissues in microgravity, acting as a stepping stone in a long-term plan to manufacture whole human organs in space using refined biological 3D printing techniques.

Cell Science-02 (CS-02): Over the weekend, the crew performed routine media transfer in support of the on-going CS-02 investigation. Early this week, the crew participated in a questionnaire session to give the ground team feedback on the CS-02 operations. Topics included item restraint methods for the experiment hardware, glove use, difficulties using any of the experiment hardware, thoroughness of the On-Board Training, etc. The CS-02 investigation uses osteoblast progenitor cells isolated from mouse bones to investigate the effects of microgravity on osteoblast cellular processes at the molecular and biochemical level. CS-02 uses a computational biology omics approach to investigate how osteoblasts respond to treatment with two known osteo-inductive factors.

Time Perception: Using head-mounted Oculus Rift display/headphones, a finger trackball, and support computer, crew members performed the Time Perception experiment sessions. In this experiment, a program on the laptop induces visual and audio stimuli to measure a subject’s response to spatial and time perception in a microgravity environment. The accurate perception of objects in the environment is a prerequisite for spatial orientation and reliable performance of motor tasks. Time is fundamental to motion perception, sound localization, speech, and fine motor coordination.

Completed Task List Activities:

N1N CPA gather

WHC KTO replace

Cell Science-02 bag ops

AstroPi kickoff message

Grasp stow

ESA PAOs (5 completed)

FE-6, FE-8, FE-9 iPad swap

BFF facility clean

Crew handover

Ground Activities:

All activities are complete unless otherwise noted.



SlingShot deployer insert

Cygnus departure prep

Payloads ops support

Look Ahead:

Tuesday, 8/6 (GMT 218)

Payloads:



Cell Science-02

FSL/Soft Matter Dynamics

Repository

Lighting Effects

Systems:

Cygnus departure

EMU resize

Wednesday, 8/7 (GMT 219)

Payloads:



Amyloid Aggregation

Biofabrication Facility

CS-02

Food Acceptability

Food Acceptability

HXP1 item exchange

Lighting Effects

Repository

SPHERES Zero Robotics dry run

Systems:

EVA tool config

Today’s Planned Activities:

All activities are complete unless otherwise noted.

