by If you buy links to our articles, the future and its syndicate partners can earn a commission.
Expedition 73 Flight engineer and NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers found this photo of Lightning Over-Shining City Lights, as he can be seen on Sunday, June 15, 2025, during a night pass through Singapore. | Credit: NASA/Nichole Ayers
With the arrival of a visiting crew, the science and maintenance work on board the international space station continued to be the week of expedition 73 of the crew as well as time for straw observation and an interview for a podcast.
Orbital observation
Is it a green aurora with pink stripes or a white aurora with green stripes? This was apparently the question of the international space station, at least for Expedition 73 Flight Engineer and Nasa astronaut Anne McClain.
“So when I took this aurora At first I thought that my settings were not correct because the Aurora looked white. I thought maybe the ISO was switched off or I selected the wrong lens. It turned out that what I thought was actually light pink, and that led me to a path of learning, ”McClain wrote on Tuesday (June 17) in a social media update from Orbit.
Like McClain, the color of Aurora depends on various factors, including the molecule that the earth’s atmosphere met, the type of influence itself, the density of the atmosphere at the point where the collision occurs, and the amount of the impact.
“Green is the most common Aurora color and occurs when the electrons meet oxygen molecules between 60-150 miles [100-240 kilometers] Height “wrote McClain”. When the sun particles are oxygen, but over 150 miles at a higher height [240 kilometers]The resulting color is red. This only happens under intensive solar storm activity due to the lower density of the atomic oxygen at higher heights. “
And as McClain found, the Aurora that she took was “was very pink!”
A statue from a video, which was recorded by the Expedition 73 flight engineer Anne McClain, shows a “very pink” aurora sampling particle that hit the atmosphere of the earth. | Credit: NASA/Anne McClain
Scientific status
The research that was carried out on board the space station this week included:
RICH -Expedition 73 flight engineer and NASA astronaut Jonny Kim installed tags around the space station as part of the demonstration of the autonomous RFID-enabled autonomous logistics management. Realm uses a freely flying robot called Astrobee to track marked equipment and freight, which may make it faster and easier for the crew members to find the objects they need when they need them.
Biomonitor -Kim also spent two days this week to continue a test with a Canadian vest that enables data acquisition about the physiological status of the carrier including heart rate, blood pressure and body temperature. Kim examined the comfort of the apparatus in the 48 hours he wore it.
Wrestling drop – The NASA colleagues and flight engineer Nichole Ayers continued her work from last week by replacing protein samples and adding new test cells to an experimental examination surface tension in order to contain and observe liquids without making the liquid contact with the otherwise firm walls of the containers.
Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritskiy, flight engineers of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, used acoustic sensors that were attached to their neck as part of the noises that they do when exhaling.
Railway courtyard
The crew also devoted itself to time to maintain the systems of the space station, including:
Window inspections -Mcclain worked in the US laboratory “Destiny” and examined and photographed the condition of the windows of the module of the module. Later she did the same in the dome of the station and inspected each of his seven windows.
Expedition 73 Commander Takuya Onishi also worked on windows, but in the Kibo module from Jaxa (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), including the glass surfaces in the electrostatic levitation soft, with which suspended samples are exposed to high temperatures.
Crank, handles and seals – Onishi spent part of this week to clean the seals on the hatch between the individual US operating segment modules and to remove dirt and dust from the handles of each hatch.
Meet – Onishi, McClain, Ayers and Kim spoke to Joe Acaba, head of the NASA astronaut office, and the leading flight director of her expedition to enforce your upcoming activities and plans for the ward.
Ryzhikov and Zurbritskiy also searched the Zvezda service module according to additional storage space. Together with Kirill Peskov, the three Russian cosmonauts also worked on the cleaning and support of two Orlan room suits used for future space weights.
Astronaut activity
On Tuesday (June 17) Ayers took part in a podcast interview for the US Air Force, Academy Association of Graduates. Ayers, a newly promoted lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, described how he saw the earth for the first time in space.
“It was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen,” she said. “And then you see the earth from the dome and the laboratory window here that country or state states have no other state. There is only geography and only terrain so that you can learn the world again and again in terms of colors and textures, geography and water.”
Ayers said she came to see our planet as “so fragile”.
“It really caused me to better take care of this earth, and when I come home, I just want to make things a little better and take this additional step,” said Ayers.
Waylaid visitor
A second week passed without the expected and now delayed arrival of the fourth visiting crew from Axiom Space.
According to the last update of NASA on Thursday (June 19), a new target start date for the AX-4 crew will be expected in the coming days. NASA takes the additional time to analyze a leak repair on the Russian side of the space station.
Axiom Space’s Ax-4 Commander Peggy Whitson, a retired NASA astronaut, is still ready to use ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) Astronaut Shubhanshu Shuckla, ESA (European Space Agency) project Astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski from Hungary from Hungary to start.
According to the numbers
From Friday (June 20th) there will be 7 people On board the international space station: Commandant Takuya Onishi by Jaxa, Anne McClain, Nichole Ayers and Jonny Kim von Nasa and Kirill Peskov, Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky from Roscosmos, all flight engineers.
There are Two Docked Crew spaceships: SpaceX ‘dragon “perseverance”, which is bound to the forward connection of the Harmony module, and Roscosmos’ Soyuz MS-27, which is bound to the earth-oriented port of the Prical node.
There are also Two devotion vehicles: Roscosmos’ progess MS-29 (90p), which is connected to the AFT port of the ZVEZDA service module to the resident connection of the Poisk module and the progress MS-30 (91p).
From Friday the space station was continuously occupied 24 years, 7 months and 19 days.
