Starting LMM operations at Glenn

Today we are working with the GRC crew that tends the LMM on the ISS. Today we spin up operations with the LMM and its ground unit the GIU, with the goal of establishing the procedures that we will use starting early Monday morning on the ISS. We are working out exposure values, magnifications and imaging locations so that all will be ready for the imaging on orbit.

Glenn Research Center is great place located in a really pretty part of the valleys and woods in this part of Cleveland. Of course it is still winter here so for us from UF it is a big change compared to Florida weather :)

The entrance into GRC, early this morning.

Ground Controls all good

Ground controls off and running!

Ground Controls starting today at KSC

Today the ground control experiments are getting started. The ground controls are a perfectly matched set of plates going into the ISSES chambers at KSC. These chambers are well matched to ISS local environment conditions such as temperature and CO2. And there is a veggie plant growth unit that is identical to the one on the ISS. This allows us to have a matched set of controls for comparison to the flight samples

Views of the ISSES Chambers and the insertion of APEX plates

ISS Operations done for the day

At this point the APEX experiment appears to be off to a great start. No reports of anomalies with the plates or the hardware. We are hoping for some downloaded HD video later in the day.

Closing out this activation process now sets the timeline for the rest of the time that Dragon is docked to the ISS. Our next operation is scheduled for the 26th, when the first harvest plates will be harvested and the Imaging Plate will be transferred to the Light Microscopy Module for GFP. In the meantime we will be monitoring growth conditions, checking with the KSC operations crew, and generally getting ready to start the on orbit analysis phase.

Video: APEX plates on the ISS

Here is a short video, captured by Joe Benjamin at the EMA at KSC, by video of the video coming down from ISS. All the plates look great :)

Commander Wilmore inserts APEX rack

Butch Wilmore reaches into Veggie to place one of the racks that holds the APEX plates

APEX is Getting Started on the ISS

With the leak situation all cleared up, the ISS crew is back to working up the science activities. This morning ISS commander Butch Wilmore will pull the APEX-03 plates out of cold stowage and insert the plates into the veggie growth unit to start the experiment. We are happy to have Butch conducting APEX and we enjoyed working with him during crew training.

Barry "Butch" Wilmore during APEX-03 UF training at JSC

BTW Good information on the ISS and the current crew is found on this NASA site.