The International Space Station is orbiting higher today after the Progress 93 cargo spacecraft, docked to the Zvezda service module’s aft port, fired its engines for over 14 minutes, 7 seconds at 8:04 a.m. EST on Wednesday. The reboost increased the space station’s altitude by 1 mile at apogee and 2.3 miles at perigee, leaving the station in an orbit of 265.5 x 255.9 statute miles. The orbital reboost places the station at the correct altitude for the arrival late next week of the Soyuz MS-28 crew spacecraft carrying NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Mikaev. The new trio will become part of the new Expedition 74 crew when NASA astronaut Jonny Kim and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky undock from the space station inside the Soyuz MS-27 crew spacecraft a few days later in early December.
Back on the orbital outpost, the Expedition 73 crew focused its science activities on exercise research and fluid physics, both benefitting humans living on and off the Earth. The space lab residents also maintained spacesuit and workout gear, reorganized cargo, and set up a sleep station to accommodate the visiting crew.
Kim began his shift jogging on the COLBERT treadmill and working out on the advanced resistive exercise device while wearing a sensor-packed vest and headband that tracked his cardiac activity for a second day. He also wore the Mobil-O-Graph that measured and recorded his blood pressure throughout Wednesday. Doctors are monitoring his health to understand how the cardiovascular system adapts to space and testing the effectiveness of portable biomedical devices in space.
Afterward, Kim installed and configured the crew alternate sleep accommodation inside the Columbus laboratory module that will temporarily house …