The ISS Progress 38 cargo craft undocked from the aft end of the International Space Station's Zvezda service module Tuesday at 7:22 a.m. EDT. The Expedition 24 crew members had loaded Progress 38 with trash and other discarded items for disposal and burn-up over the Pacific Ocean. The cargo ship will undergo thruster firing tests to gather data for Russian flight controllers before it is deorbited Monday, Sept. 6 to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere.

The unmanned ISS Progress 39 cargo craft will launch Sept. 8 and automatically dock and resupply the station crew Sept. 10.

Aboard the orbiting station Monday the Expedition 24 crew closed the hatch to Progress 38 while working on science and maintenance.

Flight Engineers Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Shannon Walker worked with the Bodies In the Space Environment, or BISE, experiment. Sponsored by the Canadian Space Agency, BISE compares pre-flight, in-flight and post-flight data to evaluate adaptation to, the effects of and recovery from long-duration spaceflight on the crew members’ perception of up and down.

Caldwell Dyson also worked with the Space Dynamically Responding Ultrasonic Matrix System, or SpaceDRUMS, a suite of hardware that uses sound waves to allow experiment samples to be processed without ever touching a container wall. This allows materials to be produced in microgravity with an unparalleled quality of shape and composition. The goal is to develop advanced materials of a commercial quantity and quality, and help improve manufacturing processes on Earth.

Meanwhile, Flight Engineer Mikhail Kornienko assisted Flight Engineer Fyodor Yurchikhin in a session with the Russian Pilot-M experiment. Pilot-M tests piloting skill in simulations on a laptop under stopwatch control and studies the response of cosmonauts to the effects of stress factors in flight.

Flight Engineer Doug Wheelock spent time with the Fluids Integrated Rack (FIR). The FIR is a fluid physics research facility designed to host investigations in areas such as colloids, gels, bubbles, wetting and capillary action and phase changes including boiling and cooling.

Commander Alexander Skvortsov performed routine maintenance of the environmental control and life support systems in the Zvezda service module. He also updated the station inventory.

Walker, Caldwell Dyson and Wheelock also answered questions from KPRC in Houston.