Expedition 74 installs CubeSats, photographs Earth aboard the ISS

Expedition 74 crewmembers aboard the International Space Station on Thursday focused on installing CubeSats and photographing Earth, with a three-person team from NASA and Roscosmos maintaining ongoing research and routine station upkeep. NASA Flight Engineer Chris Williams spent his shift inside the Kibo laboratory module loading a small satellite orbital deployer with CubeSats and installing the device inside Kibo’s airlock.

The Japanese robotic arm attached to Kibo will retrieve the deployer and point it away from the station, and on an upcoming date a series of shoebox-sized CubeSats will be deployed into Earth orbit for educational, government, and private research. Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergei Mikaev worked inside the Zvezda service module photographing Earth through windows, capturing landmarks from northwest Africa to eastern Europe and downloading the imagery for ground specialists.

He also configured a multi-spectral camera for an automated Earth photography session to capture imagery of wildfires from Africa to Southeast Asia during the crew’s sleep period. Station commander Sergey Kud-Sverchkov spent his day on electronics and life support maintenance, beginning with servicing orbital plumbing hardware and testing communication systems inside Zvezda.

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