> they are brilliant, expensive, and highly trained lab technicians who prep and repair equipment and then hit the "go" button for experiments that were designed by, and will be analyzed by, scientists on Earth
True. I was just curious if having two extra pairs of hands was letting new experiments be done, or existing ones be done more thoroughly.
Gotcha. Yea, my impression is that they always have a pretty deep backlog of maintenance tasks that can be done any time there is downtime or extra hands. That might also be true for science, e.g., repeat some experiment with different settings/conditions. (Certainly, in case of unexpected problems/delays they already have a triage plan for which experiments are performed and which are sacrificed.)
True. I was just curious if having two extra pairs of hands was letting new experiments be done, or existing ones be done more thoroughly.