Change of Command Ceremony: Expedition 57 CDR Alexander Gerst handed off station command to Expedition 58 CDR Oleg Kononenko this afternoon. The Expedition 57 Crew (Alexander Gerst, Sergey Prokopev, Serena Auñón-Chancellor) are scheduled to undock from ISS tomorrow, December 19 at 7:40PM CT with landing set to occur at 11:03PM CT.

Advanced Plant Experiment-05 (APEX-05): Today the APEX-05 Petri Plate was removed from the FIR/LMM (Fluids Integrated Rack/Light Microscopy Module), closing out the experiment. The team reports that successful imaging of root tips was accomplished. Originally the APEX-05 experiment flew on SpaceX-13 and was partially completed except for the imagery of the two LMM (Light Microscopy Module) plate samples as the LMM was not operating at the time. A new LMM wide-field camera has been installed, and two LMM samples were re-flown on SpaceX-16. The Spaceflight-induced Hypoxic/ROS Signaling (APEX-05) experiment grows different wild and mutant varieties of Arabidopsis thaliana, in order to understand how their genetic and molecular stress response systems work in space.

Airway Monitoring: The crew performed the necessary calibrations, followed by Low nitric oxide (NO) and High NO measurements for the ambient pressure session in the US Lab. The ground team reported they believe they obtained a good data set from today’s session. The ESA Airway Monitoring investigation aims to determine in detail the pulmonary NO turnover in weightlessness and in combined weightless, hypobaric and hypoxic environments. The goal is also to determine the lung diffusion capacity for NO with dust particles present in the ISS atmosphere. This investigation studies the occurrence and indicators of airway inflammation in crewmembers, using ultra-sensitive gas analyzers to analyze exhaled air. This will help to identify health impacts and support maintenance of crewmember well-being on future human spaceflight missions, such as to the Moon and Mars, where crewmembers will have to be more self-sufficient in identifying and avoiding such conditions.

Grip Supine session: The crew performed the GRIP science tasks while restrained on the chair and wearing a noise-cancelling system. ESA’s Grip investigation tests how the nervous system takes into account the forces due to gravity and inertia when manipulating objects. Results from this investigation may provide insight into potential hazards for astronauts as they manipulate objects in different gravitational environments. They also support design and control of haptic interfaces to be used in challenging environments such as space, and provide information about motor control that will be useful for the evaluation and rehabilitation of impaired upper limb control in patients with neurological diseases.

Nanoracks Module 74: Today a crewmember sequentially placed the 6 microplates into the Plate Reader-2 for scanning, and then stowed them back into Module-74. This is day 10 of the scanning operations. The Module-74 experiment investigates the Effects of Microgravity on Controlled Release of Antibiotics and Curing Mechanism of a Novel Wound Dressing (Hydrogel Formation and Drug Release in Microgravity Conditions) and studies the formation and drug release from cross-linked or mixed hydrogels in microgravity.

TangoLab-2 card cube replacement: Today a crewmember swapped out experiment cubes on Card #12 and re-inserted the Card back into the TangoLab-2 unit. The new cube (EMLT_TOC01) mission name is Organs-On-Chips as a Platform for Studying Effects of Microgravity on Human Physiology. Its goal is to analyze the effect of microgravity and other space-related stressors on the brain-blood barrier (BBB). It uses fully automated tissue chip technology, a Brain-Chip consisting of living neuronal and vascular endothelial cells in a micro-engineered environment.

Completed Task List Activities:

Cargo Transfer to Dragon

Ground Activities:

All activities are complete unless otherwise noted.



JEMRMS activity to relocate SEDA-AP from EFU11 to EFU13 in prep for jettison

Two-Day Look Ahead:

Wednesday, 12/19:

Payloads

Bone Densitometer calibration

Biolab TCU Cleaning

Functional Immune

Lighting effects

Microbial Tracking-2

NR-module 74 scan

Standard Measures

Time Perception

Team Task Switching

Systems

Soyuz 55S Undocking

Thursday, 12/20: – Crew Off Duty

Today’s Planned Activities:

All activities are complete unless otherwise noted.

