The Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the other colleagues of the Crew-4 mission have arrived on the International Space Station . The hatch separating the Crew Dragon Freedom capsule from the ISS has been opened, the crew is on board .
Thus Cristoforetti begins his second mission , Minerva. With her, NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines and Jessica Watkins. They were welcomed by the 7 crew members of the Space Station, with Raya Chali, Thomas Mashbirn and Kayla Barrow, all of NASA, Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveyev and Sergei Korsakov, of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, and the German Mathias Maurer, of the Hex.
The first to enter the Space Station was the crew -4 pilot, Bob Hines, then it was the turn of Jessica Watkins and Samantha Cristoforetti, finally the commander Kjell Lindgren entered. Now the orbital station is crowded again, with 11 people on board.
THE EXPERIMENTS - For the Italian astronaut now begins an intense period of work of about six months in which he will have to follow many experiments. Among these, six were designed by the Italian Space Agency (ASI), and concern the effects of the permanence of space on the human organism, such as oxidative stress and the impact of microgravity on the female reproductive system and hearing ; Also planned are tests on the impact of microgravity and radiation on the characteristics of Italian extra virgin olive oil and the experimentation of a particle detector .
Cristoforetti will lead the American Orbital Segment , which includes the US, European and Canadian modules and components of the Space Station. Finally, there is the possibility that the Italian ESA astronaut may face one of the planned spacewalks to complete the installation of the European robotic arm of the Space Station.
(Unioneonline / D)