NASA astronauts arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday afternoon aboard SpaceX’s Dragon Endurance spacecraft. The SpaceX Crew-5 and Expedition 68 crew docked at the ISS at around 5 pm ET and the crew was able to enter the station at around 6:49 pm ET after routine pressurization and leak checks, NASA reports.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Endurance crew ship launched from the Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A in Florida at about 12 pm ET on Thursday. The journey to the ISS lasted 29 hours. “It was an outstanding launch,” said Joel Montalbano, manager of the ISS program at Johnson Space Center. “Just a fantastic day to be in human spaceflight.”
NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina joined the Expedition 68 crew. This mission is the first time that Mann, Cassada, and Kikina would be in space; but it is the fifth for Wakata. Mann is now the first Native American woman to go to space.
There is now a total of 11 people working on various scientific experiments at the ISS – but the number will reduce by next week when the Crew-4 team will return to Earth. The Crew-5 that just arrived will be in space for six months and will return to Earth in 2023. The latest arrivals met NASA flight engineers Jessica Watkins, Frank Rubio, and Kjell Lindgren; ESA’s Samantha Cristoforetti, and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin among others at the station. Cristoforetti is the mission commander.
NASA astronauts arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday afternoon aboard SpaceX’s Dragon Endurance spacecraft. The SpaceX Crew-5 and Expedition 68 crew docked at the ISS at around 5 pm ET and the crew was able to enter the station at around 6:49 pm ET after routine pressurization and leak checks, NASA reports.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Endurance crew ship launched from the Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A in Florida at about 12 pm ET on Thursday. The journey to the ISS lasted 29 hours. “It was an outstanding launch,” said Joel Montalbano, manager of the ISS program at Johnson Space Center. “Just a fantastic day to be in human spaceflight.”
NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina joined the Expedition 68 crew. This mission is the first time that Mann, Cassada, and Kikina would be in space; but it is the fifth for Wakata. Mann is now the first Native American woman to go to space.
There is now a total of 11 people working on various scientific experiments at the ISS – but the number will reduce by next week when the Crew-4 team will return to Earth. The Crew-5 that just arrived will be in space for six months and will return to Earth in 2023. The latest arrivals met NASA flight engineers Jessica Watkins, Frank Rubio, and Kjell Lindgren; ESA’s Samantha Cristoforetti, and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin among others at the station. Cristoforetti is the mission commander.
The Crew-5 members will study microgravity’s effects on the cardiorespiratory system, modeling heart tissue to improve therapies for spaceflight-caused health issues, and the 3D bioprinting of human organs and tissues for implantation, and research during their time at the ISS. Watkins worked on how to grow crops and manufacture products in space for the XROOTs program on Thursday afternoon, while Rubio studied using weightlessness to improve the production and quality of fiber optic cables.