NEUROCOG aims at understanding how humans perceive space, the role that the sensory information of sight, balance, motion and position plays in this, and how their perception is affected by weightlessness. CARDIOCOG looks into changes in the cardiovascular and respiratory systems of humans in weightlessness.
The third ESA life science experiment on this flight is called BMI. It will monitor changes in blood pressure rhythms over 24 hours and the results could lead to measures to counter the phenomenon of blood pooling in humans in weightlessness.
In addition to the above experiments, a biology activation unit for ROOT and GENE experiment has been uploaded. The next flight will be on the Soyuz TMA-3 spacecraft which will be taking ESA astronaut Pedro Duque to the ISS on 18 October.
Pedro Duque will have other duties during the Spanish Soyuz mission to the ISS. One important task that he will be involved in is the replacement of the Soyuz TMA-2 spacecraft, the ISS lifeboat which has been at the station since April. This coincides with the ISS crew change.
Duque will be flight engineer on the Soyuz TMA-3, which will take him and the ISS Expedition 8 crew (US astronaut Michael Foale and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri) to the ISS. He will return in the Soyuz TMA-2 spacecraft with the Expedition 7 crew (US astronaut Ed Lu and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko) who are currently on the ISS.
In preparation for his mission ESA astronaut Pedro Duque is currently training in Star City in Moscow and will become the sixth European astronaut to visit the International Space Station. For the first time a European astronaut will be Pedro Duque's back-up, Dutch ESA Astronaut Andr Kuipers, who is scheduled to fly on a Dutch Soyuz mission to the ISS in April 2004.
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Contact: Franco Bonacina
franco.bonacina@esa.int
33-015-369-7155
European Space Agency
9-Sep-2003