Two resupply missions are scheduled to arrive at the orbital laboratory

Feb 3, 2014 07:12 GMT  ·  By

The Expedition 38 crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS) had a busy schedule last week, particularly on Friday, January 31, but their plans are about to get even more crowded in February. Two spacecraft are expected to dock to the ISS this month, delivering essential supply for the astronauts. 

Last Friday, the six astronauts aboard the station had to tackle a series of maintenance tasks, as well as conduct a series of world-class experiments. Most of the maintenance was conducted in the Destiny, Tranquility, Columbus and Kibo modules.

Astronauts handled a wide variety of tasks, ranging from adding coolant to a fluid system services and replacing a battery in a science freezer to adding an Internal Wireless Integrated System sensor to the Tranquility module and repairing the ground cable on a food warmer.

The work was carried out by NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins and Rick Mastracchio, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Koichi Wakata. Meanwhile, Expedition 38 Commander Oleg Kotov and flight engineer Sergey Ryazanskiy, both from the Russian Federal Space Agency (RosCosmos), worked to rid the ISS of its trash, SpaceRef reports.

The duo finished loading the unmanned Progress 52 resupply spacecraft with refuse and other unwanted items from the station. The team also closed the hatches connecting the Progress to the ISS, ahead of a planned undocking today, February 3. Progress will reenter Earth's atmosphere, and be destroyed in the process, on February 11.

Replacing it will be the Progress 54 capsule, which will launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on February 5. This spacecraft will deliver more than 2.8 tons of cargo, including food, air, water, experiments, astronaut items and spare parts. Progress 54 is expected to dock to the ISS about 6 hours after launch, and will be housed on the Russian-built Pirs docking hub.

The second resupply spacecraft to dock to the ISS is the Dragon capsule built by the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX), on Hawthorne, California. The vehicle will be conducting its third flight to the station, dubbed CRS-3, and is currently scheduled to launch on March 1.

It will be carried into space aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 medium-lift delivery system, which will take off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS), in Florida. Once it arrives at the ISS, the spacecraft will be docked to the nadir berthing port on the US-built Harmony module.