NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Expedition 34 Flight Engineer Oleg Novitskiy eats a snack near the galley in the Zvezda service module of the International Space Station. Credit: NASA

The three Expedition 34 crew members living and working aboard the International Space Station participated in emergency response drills and conducted a variety of science experiments Thursday, while three additional crew members took part in a news conference as preparations for their upcoming launch to the orbiting outpost continue.

Commander Kevin Ford and Flight Engineers Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin took part in a pair of emergency Soyuz descent drills, working closely with ground control teams during simulated fire and depressurization emergencies. The training gives station crew members the opportunity to work as a team in resolving simulated emergency situations and refreshes their memory of equipment locations, use, and procedures.

Ford worked in the Destiny lab’s Microgravity Science Glovebox for the ongoing InSPACE-3 experiment. That study observes fluids filled with microscopic particles, or colloids, and how they behave when exposed to magnetic fields.

› Read more about InSPACE-3

Novitskiy worked with the Identification experiment, which examines the station’s dynamic loads during events such as dockings and reboosts.

› Read more about Identification

He also worked with a Russian experiment known as Relaxation, which examines chemical luminescent reactions from jet engine exhaust in the Earth’s atmosphere.

› Read more about Relaxation

Tarelkin worked with the radiation payload suite Matryoshka-R, which is designed for sophisticated radiation studies and is named after the traditional Russian set of nested dolls, as well as the Seiner Earth-observation experiment.

› Read more about Matryoshka
› Read about Seiner

Expedition 34 Flight Engineers Chris Hadfield (left), Roman Romanenko (center) and Tom Marshburn (right) clasp hands for reporters and photojournalists at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia Nov. 28, 2012 during the second of two days of flight qualification exams. Credit: NASA

After receiving their formal certification for flight after two days of qualification exams, three additional Expedition 34 crew members, NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield, and Russian Federal Space Agency cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, held their traditional news conference at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia. They later traveled into Moscow to tour Red Square and the Kremlin, highlighted by the laying of flowers at the Kremlin Wall where Russian space icons are interred.

The trio is scheduled to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome Dec. 19 and dock to the station two days later for a five-month stay. Hadfield will become the first Canadian to command the station when Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin depart in March, marking the start of Expedition 35.