New multinational astronaut crew launches to ISS

Three new crew members, including NASA biologist Kate Rubins, are currently en route to the International Space Station (ISS) after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on an upgraded Soyuz rocket Wednesday night, the US space agency has confirmed.

Rubins, along with Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Takuya Onishi, began what will be a two-day journey at 9:36pm EDT on July 6. They will be testing the modified systems onboard the Soyuz MS-01 before docking on Saturday morning, according to Space.com.

During a NASA TV broadcast, spokesperson Brandi Dean told reporters that the crew members were safely in orbit following “a picture-perfect launch” on a “beautiful, clear day in Baikonur.” Ivanishin reported that the three crew members were “feeling fine” following the liftoff.

Once he, Onishi, and Rubins dock with the ISS, they will join Expedition 48 Commander Jeff Williams of NASA and Flight Engineers Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin of Roscosmos to return the station to a full six-person crew. The new arrivals will remain on the ISS until late October and will be involved with more than 250 research projects in various fields.

Research will include attempt to sequence DNA in microgravity

Among those scientific investigations are experiments in the fields of fields of molecular and cellular biology, human physiology, fluid dynamics, materials science, and physics, including a remarkable research project where Rubins will attempt to sequence DNA in space.

According to Wired and Engadget, the biologist said that she plans to use a USB-sized device known as the MinION sequencer. The sequencer, which was invented by a UK company called Oxford Nanopore, costs just $1,000 (a fraction of most traditional sequencers), and Rubins said that she hopes it will provide insight into how such instruments work in microgravity.

“We’re going to see how that technology behaves in microgravity,” she told Wired during an interview conducted earlier this week. “Does the liquid layer form the same? Does the DNA sequence go through the nanopores the same way? Can we get good data out of this?”

If it works as expected, Rubins explained that her team hopes to use it to examine microbial communities on the space station. “Our water is recycled, our air is recycled,” she said. “It’s a really interesting environment that’s been in space for 10 years continuously now, and we’ve essentially put microbes up there. It’s going to be really interesting to see how that’s evolved.”

Other experiments will involve studies centered around temperature regulation on spacecraft, improving our understanding of bone loss from prolonged space travel, learning how to protect computers from radiation while in orbit, and testing a new type of three-dimensional solar cell, NASA said. The crew will also receive multiple resupply vehicles.

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Image credit: NASA

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