Equipment installation and station maintenance are at the top of the International Space Station's (ISS) on-orbit schedule on Tuesday, February 13. While awaiting the arrival of the upcoming cargo spacecraft, Expedition 70 crew members continued the work they started yesterday and completed some maintenance work around the space station.

GITAI's 1.5-meter-long autonomous dual-arm system (S2). S2 will be installed on the Nanoracks Bishop airlock outside the International Space Station (ISS) to perform on-orbit services, including satellite maintenance, inspection and life extension operations. Source: GITAI

The Progress 87 cargo spacecraft is scheduled to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 10:25 pm ET on Wednesday, February 14. Progress, which will carry nearly three tons of food, fuel and supplies, will dock at the space station at approximately 1:12 a.m. on Saturday, February 17.

As a cargo supply ship prepares for launch, two astronauts - Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub - were on duty last night (February 12) to monitor the departure of the Progress 85 cargo spacecraft. Progress decoupled from the orbiting laboratory at 9:09 p.m. and reentered the Earth's atmosphere three hours later, burning harmlessly over the Pacific Ocean.

The picture shows the moment after the International Space Station "Progress 81" supply ship from the Russian Space Agency detached from the rear port of the "Zvezda" service module. Image source: NASA

After that, Kononenko and Chubu had an easy task, mainly reviewing the cargo and preparing for future experiments.

Meanwhile, European Space Agency (ESA) Commander Andreas Mogensen spends much of his day inside the Nanoracks Bishop airlock. He installed the Nanoracks-GITAIS2 modular robotic arm to demonstrate the design, manufacturing and operation of the extravehicular robotic system. This technology demonstration is intended to help develop robots for space assembly and manufacturing to support future commercial lunar missions.

NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli's day was varied: collecting blood pressure data for a vascular aging survey, putting away the biomonitoring suit and headband she wore yesterday, and collecting atmospheric samples throughout the space station.

Jasmin Moghbeli took a group photo in front of the "Advanced Plant Habitat" of the "Hope" experimental module. Tomato plants are grown in the "Advanced Plant Habitat" to study how plant immune systems adapt to spaceflight and how spaceflight affects plant production. Image source: NASA

NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara assisted Mogensen in installing Nanoracks-GITAIS2 before photographing the Plant-Microbe Interaction in Space (APEX-10) petri dish, which was launched to the space station aboard Northrop Grumman's 20th commercial resupply mission. The new study explores whether beneficial microorganisms can mitigate some of the negative effects of the space environment on plant growth and development.

At the Hope Laboratory, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) flight engineer Satoshi Furukawa spent the day recording space demonstrations proposed by students for JAXA's Try Zero-Gravity educational event. Students can vote and suggest tasks that JAXA astronauts will perform on the space station, such as dropping eye drops and doing push-ups on the ceiling, allowing teenagers to interact with space station residents and learn about life and work in microgravity.

On the Roscosmos portion, flight engineer Konstantin Borisov completed some orbital maintenance tasks and performed a distillation cycle on Roscosmos’ water management system.