Category: SpaceX Crew-1

The International Space Station has a new commander today as four astronauts prepare for their return to Earth this Saturday. The orbital residents will also send off a Russian cargo craft on Tuesday evening, completing its year-long stay at the orbital lab.

The four SpaceX Crew-1 astronauts have a new splashdown date after mission managers waved off Wednesday’s planned departure due to weather conditions at the landing site. The quartet of Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and Soichi Noguchi, is now targeting a splashdown off the coast of Florida for Saturday at 11:36 a.m. EDT.

NASA TV will begin its continuous live coverage at 3:30 p.m. Friday starting with hatch closure of the Crew Dragon Resilience set for 3:50 p.m. Resilience with its four-person crew will then autonomously undock from the Harmony module’s space-facing international docking adapter at 5:55 p.m. completing a 164-day station research mission.

Walker handed over station command to today Akihiko Hoshide from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) during the traditional change of command ceremony. Hoshide, Japan’s second station commander, will now lead Expedition 65 until October of this year.

Hoshide arrived at the orbital lab on April 24 aboard the Crew Dragon Endeavour with SpaceX Crew-2. NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough commanded Endeavour riding alongside Pilot Megan McArthur and Mission Specialists Hoshide and Thomas Pesquet during the near 24-hour trip that began with a launch from Kennedy Space Center.

Staying on the orbiting lab with the four Crew-2 astronauts are NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov. The trio docked to the station’s Rassvet module inside the Soyuz MS-18 crew ship on April 9 and will stay on orbit until October.

Russia’s ISS Progress 75 cargo craft has been packed with trash and discarded gear and its hatch closed for an undocking today at 7:11 p.m. It will leave the Zvezda service module’s aft port and spend another day orbiting Earth on its own before reentering Earth’s atmosphere above the Pacific Ocean for a fiery, but safe destruction.

Four astronauts aboard the International Space Station are preparing to return to Earth in a few days. The Expedition 65 orbital residents are also conducting space science while preparing to send off a Russian cargo craft.

There are two four-member SpaceX crews aboard the station today including a three-member Soyuz crew. The four SpaceX Crew-1 astronauts are turning their attention to returning to Earth this week after being in space since Nov. 16.

Crew-1 commander Michael Hopkins joined Pilot Victor Glover and Mission Specialists Shannon Walker and Soichi Noguchi for a conference with mission managers on the ground today. The quartet is working on the proper time to undock the Crew Dragon Resilience from the station and splashdown off the coast of Florida this week.

The station’s newest Crew-2 astronauts are in their first week aboard the station and getting used to life on orbit. Crew Dragon Endeavour commander Shane Kimbrough along with Pilot Megan McArthur and Mission Specialists Thomas Pesquet and Akihiko Hoshide docked to the station on Saturday at 5:08 a.m. EDT to begin a six-month space research mission.

As the Crew-2 Dragon was heading for the space station about 1 p.m. Friday, the NASA/SpaceX team was informed that a piece of unidentified space debris might pass close to the Dragon spacecraft. U.S. Space Command, which tracks orbital debris (or space junk), informed the team that the closest approach to dragon would be at 1:43 p.m. Since there wasn’t time to compute and execute a debris avoidance maneuver with confidence, the SpaceX team elected to have the crew put on their pressure suits as part of standard safety protocols. Upon further analysis, the command’s 18th Space Control Squadron determined the object was a false report, and there was never a collision threat to the Crew-Dragon. The crew successfully docked to the station and is continuing its mission in orbit.

Station Commander Walker will hand over station control to Hoshide on Tuesday at 1:25 p.m. Hoshide will assume command of Expedition 65 during the change of command ceremony live on NASA TV.

Staying aboard with Crew-2 are three crewmates who rocketed to the orbiting lab aboard the Soyuz MS-18 crew ship on April 9. NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei is on his second station mission having served previously as an Expedition 53/54 flight engineer. This is the third station visit for cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy who was last aboard the station in 2013 and 2016. Cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov is on his first space flight.

There was time for science in space today with the crew servicing combustion research gear and transferring frozen biological samples into science freezers. Hardware for an experiment supporting pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries is also being packed for return to Earth soon.

A Russian cargo craft, the ISS Progress 75, is due to depart from the Zvezda service module on Tuesday at 7:11 p.m. This will complete a year-long stay on the station’s Russian segment one day before it reenters Earth’s atmosphere above the Pacific Ocean for a fiery, but safe destruction.

NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, along with JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Thomas Pesquet  aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon have arrived at the International Space Station.

Crew-2 joins Expedition 65 crew of crew of Shannon Walker, Michael Hopkins,  Victor Glover, and Mark Vande Hei of NASA, as well as Soichi Noguchi of JAXA and Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov.

The crew members first opened the hatch between the space station and the pressurized mating adapter at 7:05 a.m. EDT then opened the hatch to Crew Dragon.

NASA TV will continue to provide live coverage through the welcoming ceremony with leadership from NASA, ESA and JAXA to greet the crew on station. The welcome ceremony is targeted to begin about 7:45 a.m. with the following participants:

• Steve Jurczyk, acting NASA administrator
• Kathy Lueders, associate administrator, Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters
• Hiroshi Yamakawa, president, JAXA
• Josef Aschbacher, director general, ESA

Follow along and get more information about the mission at: http://www.nasa.gov/crew-2.  Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

NASA Television and the agency’s website are providing live continuous coverage of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-2 mission carrying NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, along with JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Thomas Pesquet on their way to the International Space Station.

The Crew Dragon spacecraft, named Endeavour, began the final phase of its approach to the station at 3:31 a.m. EDT Saturday and is scheduled to dock at about 5:10 a.m. Crew Dragon is designed to dock autonomously, but the crew aboard the spacecraft and the space station will monitor the performance of the spacecraft as it approaches and docks to the forward port of the station’s Harmony module.

When the hatches open about 7:15 a.m. Saturday, April 24, the Crew-2 astronauts will join the Expedition 65 crew of Shannon Walker, Michael Hopkins,  Victor Glover, and Mark Vande Hei of NASA, as well as Soichi Noguchi of JAXA and Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov. For a short time, the number of crew on the space station will increase to 11 people until Crew-1 astronauts Walker, Hopkins, Glover, and Noguchi return a few days later.

Follow along and get more information about the mission at: http://www.nasa.gov/crew-2.  Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

Five Expedition 65 astronauts are off-duty today relaxing one day before four Commercial Crew astronauts launch toward the International Space Station. The orbiting lab’s two cosmonauts focused on Russian science and life support maintenance tasks throughout Thursday.

NASA Commander Shannon Walker and Flight Engineers Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Mark Vande Hei of NASA including Soichi Noguchi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) took it easy on the station today. The quintet is relaxing before gearing up for six days of crew swap activities. They will get back to work on Friday with more space research and preparations for the arrival of the SpaceX Crew-2 astronauts early Saturday.

Cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov stayed busy on Thursday in the station’s Russian segment. The duo partnered up for a study to maximize the effectiveness of space exercise. Novitskiy then checked out power systems while Dubrov worked on life support gear.

SpaceX Crew-2 Commander Shane Kimbrough and Pilot Megan McArthur will launch Friday at 5:49 a.m. to the station aboard the Crew Dragon Endeavour. The NASA duo will be flanked by Mission Specialists Akihiko Hoshide of JAXA and Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency. The veteran foursome will dock on Saturday at 5:10 a.m. to the Harmony module’s forward-facing international docking adapter. NASA TV begins its continuous launch and docking coverage on Friday at 1:30 a.m.

The new quartet’s arrival will set in motion the next crew swap as the SpaceX Crew-1 astronauts turn their attention toward returning to Earth on April 28. Hopkins will lead his crewmates Glover, Walker and Noguchi as they undock from the station then parachute inside the Crew Dragon Resilience to a splashdown off the coast of Florida just a few hours later.

Vande Hei will stay behind with Novitskiy, Dubrov and the four SpaceX Crew-2 astronauts. They will remain at the station as the Expedition 65 crew until the next series of crew swaps planned for later this year begins.

Crew Dragon Resilience with NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker, along with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Soichi Noguchi, have re-docked to the International Space Station, another first for a commercial crew spacecraft.

Crew Dragon autonomously undocked from the forward port of the station’s Harmony module at 6:30 a.m. and relocated to the space-facing port at 7:08 a.m.

This is the start of a process that will enable extraction of new solar arrays from the SpaceX CRS-22 cargo mission’s trunk when it arrives to dock at the Node 2 zenith port following Crew-1 departure.

NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and  Megan McArthur, JAXA astronaut Aki Hoshide, and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Thomas Pesquet are scheduled to launch to the station Thursday, April 22, from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Following a short handover, Crew-1 NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, along with JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi, plan to return home off the coast of Florida about five days after the Crew-2 arrival to the space station as long as mission priorities and weather cooperate.

NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website are providing live coverage as four residents of the International Space Station prepare to take a spin around their orbital neighborhood in the Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft, relocating it to prepare for the arrival of the next set of commercial crew astronauts and the delivery of new solar arrays this summer.

NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker, along with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Soichi Noguchi, are scheduled to undock Resilience from the forward port of the station’s Harmony module at 6:29 a.m. and dock to the space-facing (zenith) port at 7:15 a.m.

The relocation will free Harmony’s forward port for the docking of Crew Dragon Endeavour, set to carry four crew members to the station on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-2 mission. NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and  Megan McArthur, JAXA astronaut Aki Hoshide, and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Thomas Pesquet are scheduled to launch to the station Thursday, April 22, from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

This is the start of a process that will enable extraction of new solar arrays from the SpaceX CRS-22 cargo mission’s trunk when it arrives to dock at the Node 2 zenith port following Crew-1 departure.

This will be the first port relocation of a Crew Dragon spacecraft, and another first for commercial spaceflight. NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission lifted off Nov. 15, 2020, and docked to the space station Nov. 16.