Advanced Health Research Begins Week as Station Awaits Crew-13 Mission

Expedition 75 began the week scanning veins, checking out space workout gear, and testing specialized suits to ease the adjustment to Earth's gravity. Back on Earth, NASA's SpaceX Crew-13 members are counting down to a launch on Oct. 1.

NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Anil Menon, station commander and flight engineer respectively, started their shift together with vein scans in the Columbus laboratory module. Meir operated the Ultrasound 3 device and scanned Menon's jugular vein then measured his blood pressure for the Venous Flow investigation. Doctors will analyze the biomedical data to detect potential space-caused blood conditions such as blood clots or changes to blood chemistry.

NASA flight engineer Jack Hathaway assisted Menon at the beginning of the vein study collecting a blood sample and placing it inside a centrifuge for spinning. At the conclusion of the sample processing, Menon analyzed the sample for a red blood cell count to help doctors determine if the cardiovascular system, influenced by microgravity, delivers adequate oxygen throughout a crew member's body. Afterward, Hathaway collected station water samples for microbial analysis then cleaned his crew quarters in the port side of the Harmony module.

Meir later joined the three crewmates she will return to Earth with next week and tested specialized suits that may help the foursome quickly adjust to gravity after nearly eight months in space. The suit may help maintain adequate cerebral blood pressure once on the ground and prevent dizziness or light-headedness at the end of a mission. Meir and Hathaway along with flight engineers Sophie Adenot of ESA (European Space Agency) and Andrey Fedyaev of Roscosmos are preparing to ride the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft back to Earth a few days after the SpaceX Crew-13 mission launches and docks to the orbital outpost on Thursday. Oct. 1.

Flight engineer Sophie Adenot of ESA (European Space Agency) spent most of her shift working on exercise research hardware. Adenot's first job was inside the Tranquility module where she tested the functionality of ARED (advanced resistive exercise device) Kinematics computer hardware. The human research study allows researchers to track an astronaut's body load during a space workout to optimize crew health in microgravity. Next, she guided Menon on how to work out on the European Enhanced Exploration Exercise Device (E4D) located in Columbus. The E4D is being evaluated for its ability to keep crews fit inside spacecraft on long-term missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

Fedyaev conducted a second session with an experimental suit, this one designed by Roscosmos, that may ease his adjustment to Earth's gravity. Roscosmos flight engineer Anna Kikina assisted Fedyaev as he wore the lower body negative pressure suit that reverses space-caused fluid shifts from the head toward the feet. Kikina also pointed a camera out a window on the Zvezda service module and photographed landmarks in southern Russia from the Volga River to the Ukok Plateau.

Roscosmos flight engineer Pyotr Dubrov explored high-purity semiconductor crystals using a high-temperature furnace in the Nauka science module. The physics research may advance space and terrestrial manufacturing techniques.

Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog , @space_station on X, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

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