The crew of a new expedition to the International Space Station (ISS) will install special equipment to monitor Earth’s atmosphere and forecast natural disasters, ISS-36 Crew Commander Pavel Vinogradov said on Thursday, March 7, according to RIA Novosti.

The new crew, which will lift off from the Baikonur space center on the night of March 28 abroad a Soyuz-TMA-08M carrier rocket, will install the equipment on the outer surface of the station’s Russian segment during one of the four spacewalks, he said.

It is a complex system of sensors and antennas designed to study the plasma/wave processes in the upper layers of Earth’s atmosphere, “which will eventually benefit mankind by forecasting earthquakes and other natural disasters,” Vinogradov said.

Later this year a new Russian laboratory module (MLM) will be docked with the ISS to expand the Russian segment.

Next year, a research/power module (NEM) will be added to the ISS, which will become a key facility for conducting advanced scientific research experiments as part of the Russian program, he said.