4 people from 4 nations, together with the second Japanese astronaut to log a cumulative 12 months in house and Denmark’s first Worldwide Area Station (ISS) commander, are making ready to depart the sprawling orbital advanced at 11:05 a.m. EDT Monday, for a parachute-aided splashdown off the Florida Coast at 5:35 a.m. EDT Tuesday. Crew-7 Commander Jasmin Moghbeli of NASA, Denmark’s Andreas Mogensen of the European Area Company (ESA), Russian cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov and Japan Aerospace Exploration Company (JAXA) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa will wrap up their 6.5-month-long Expedition 69/70 increment after greater than 199 days in low-Earth orbit, just some hours shy of setting a brand new file for the longest single spaceflight ever undertaken by a U.S. crew-carrying automobile.
The quartet will head dwelling aboard SpaceX’s Dragon Endurance, which is closing out the third orbital voyage of her profession and returning to Earth after racking up greater than 530 days in house, over 8,400 accomplished orbits of Earth and in extra of 225 million miles (360 million kilometers) traveled. Endurance was the third Crew Dragon to hold people—after the currently-in-space Endeavour and her sister Resilience—and units herself in pole place as probably the most flight-experienced member of the four-ship fleet.
Endurance first launched in November 2021 for Crew-3, transporting NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron, along with ESA flyer Matthias Maurer of Germany, to the house station for a six-month keep, spanning Expeditions 66/67. That crew, who selected their ship’s title to acknowledge “the tenacity of human spirit” in overcoming the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, and provided a tip of the hat to Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic exploration vessel, returned safely to Earth in Might of 2022 after 176 days in house and over 2,700 orbits.
She was put instantly again into service for the half-year Crew-5 mission, launching NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, Japan’s Koichi Wakata and Anna Kikina, the primary Russian cosmonaut ever to journey a Business Crew automobile, in October 2022. Returning dwelling in March of final 12 months, after 157 days in house and greater than 2,500 orbits, she established a brand new cumulative complete of over 333 days throughout her first two missions and set herself in first place as probably the most flight-experienced Crew Dragon, a file she relinquished final April to her veteran sister Endeavour then received again in early January 2024.
Endurance launched for her third and present mission at 3:27 a.m. EDT final 26 August, rising from historic Pad 39A at Florida’s Kennedy Area Middle (KSC) and lofting Moghbeli, Mogensen—the primary non-U.S. citizen to function pilot of a U.S. crewed automobile—Furukawa and Borisov on the preliminary leg of their trek to the ISS. After virtually 30 hours in impartial flight, Endurance docked autonomously on the forward-facing port of the station’s Concord node at 9:16 a.m. EDT on the twenty seventh and after hatch opening at 10:58 a.m. EDT the newcomers folded into the incumbent Expedition 69 crew, led by Russia’s Sergei Prokopyev.
After a week-long operational handover, their Crew-6 predecessors—NASA astronauts Steve Bowen and Warren “Woody” Hoburg, Russian cosmonaut Andrei Fedyayev and Sultan Al-Neyadi of the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—departed in Dragon Endeavour and returned to Earth, wrapping up 185 days in house. And in mid-September, Soyuz MS-24 arrived with Russia’s Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub, plus NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara, to exchange the outgoing Prokopyev, Dmitri Petelin and record-setting Frank Rubio, who returned dwelling in late September aboard Soyuz MS-23 after 371 days in orbit.
With a brand new crew in place, Expedition 70 formally commenced final 26 September underneath the command of Mogensen, who grew to become the seventh ESA astronaut and the primary Dane to helm the sprawling orbital advanced. “A dream come true,” Mogensen not too long ago tweeted, “the place I bought to reside and work on the Worldwide Area Station for greater than six months, conducting science from Denmark, Europe and the world in areas like our immune system, water filtration, digital actuality and the way we sleep on the house station.”
However what didn’t come Mogensen’s approach, sadly, was the chance to carry out a spacewalk. Unique plans referred to as for 2 U.S. classes of Extravehicular Exercise (EVA) on 12 and 20 October 2023, the primary by O’Hara and Mogensen to retrieve microbial specimens and change a high-definition exterior digicam and the second by O’Hara and Moghbeli to take away a defective Radio Frequency Group (RFG) electronics field from a communications antenna bracket and change considered one of 12 Trundle Bearing Assemblies (TBAs) on the port-side Photo voltaic Alpha Rotary Joint (SARJ).
Sadly, on 9 October flakes of particles had been noticed emanating from considered one of two radiators on Russia’s Nauka (“Science”) lab, indicative of a coolant leak. Though the leak ceased inside a few days, NASA elected to postpone each EVAs till no ahead of 19 and 30 October, pending a assessment of knowledge and video related to the incident.
Within the meantime, on 16 October the primary of the 2 spacewalks, by O’Hara and Mogensen, was postponed initially till December and ultimately into 2024, with NASA officers noting that its duties weren’t time-critical. The second spacewalk, by Moghbeli and O’Hara, was later moved to 1 November to allow extra preparation time.
By this stage, Kononenko and Chub carried out a Russian-based EVA on 25 October, throughout which they spent seven hours and 41 minutes exterior the ISS inspecting and photographing the troubled radiator, deploying a tiny nanosatellite and putting in an artificial radar communications system, considered one of whose panels couldn’t be totally unfurled. For his or her half, Moghbeli and O’Hara—each making the primary EVAs of their respective careers—logged six hours and 42 minutes within the vacuum of house.
Theirs marked solely the fourth all-female spacewalk, following three prior EVAs by Expedition 61’s Christina Koch and Jessica Meir between October 2019 and January 2020. Throughout their time exterior, Moghbeli and O’Hara changed the TBA however though they had been capable of make an evaluation of multi- ran out of time to finish the RFG activity, which has been deferred to Expedition 71.
November noticed the arrival of SpaceX’s CRS-29 Cargo Dragon mission, laden with over 6,500 kilos (2,950 kilograms) of kit, payloads and provides, which spent a month docked on the station earlier than returning to Earth on 22 December. And on the finish of January, for the primary time a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched Northrop Grumman Corp.’s NG-20 Cygnus cargo ship with greater than 8,200 kilos (3,700 kilograms) of analysis in robotic surgical procedure, cartilage tissue progress and semiconductors.
Analysis ran the gamut from cardiac exercise and blood stress measurements to plasma physics, from eye well being to observations of accelerated aging-like signs in human arteries and from quantum physics analysis to the statement of thunderstorms and electrical discharges. A pair of Russian Progress cargo freighters arrived in December and February, with two others departing in November and final month.
And in January, Dragon Freedom ferried Ax-3 crewmen Mike Lopez-Alegria, Walter Villadei, Marcus Wandt and Alper Gezeravcı—the primary nationwide house traveler of Türkiye—to the ISS for what turned out to be an virtually three-week mission emphasizing science, know-how and academic outreach. With U.S., Russian, Danish, Japanese, Italian, Swedish and Turkish crewmembers (and Lopez-Alegria of Spanish heritage), the presence of the A-Ax-3 crew noticed Expedition 70 briefly boosted to eight nationalities.
Final weekend, Dragon Endeavour roared uphill with Crew-7’s replacements, the Crew-8 quartet of NASA astronauts Matt Dominick, Mike Barratt and Jeanette Epps, along with Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Grebenkin, who will stay aboard the house station till August. Having fallen foul to a number of days of weather-induced delay, the newcomers earned the unenviable moniker of “Crew-L8” and their later-than-intended arrival pushed Crew-7 ever nearer to the nominal 210-day restrict for a Crew Dragon to stay in house.
A splashdown on Monday at 5:35 a.m. EDT will conclude Crew-7 after 199 days, two hours and eight minutes, wrapping up over 3,180 orbits of Earth and can put this mission in second place on the listing of the longest spaceflights ever undertaken by a U.S.-built crew-carrying automobile. Solely Crew-2, which led to November 2021 after 199 days and 17 hours, and greater than 3,190 orbits, has spent longer off the planet, with a number of Russian Soyuz missions since August 1998 having tremendously exceeded 200 days in house.
Earlier Sunday, Mogensen formally relinquished command of Expedition 70 to Kononenko, who will helm the station via September and lead the transition into Expedition 71 later this month. “Time is a little bit of a wierd idea,” Mogensen waxed, noting that though Crew-7’s six-months-plus in orbit has handed extraordinarily shortly, their launch final August now appears “a lifetime in the past”.
He paid glowing tribute to Kononenko because the incoming commander. In addition to being considered one of solely 4 folks to have voyaged 5 instances to the ISS—after Yuri Malenchenko, Fyodor Yurchikhin and Mike Lopez-Alegria—Kononenko final month handed fellow Russian cosmonaut Gennadi Padalka’s 878-day cumulative file for the best period of time spent in house by any human. Kononenko will return to Earth in September 2024 after logging about 1,100 days in orbit throughout his cosmonaut profession, equal to about 5 p.c of his lifetime up to now.
“In all probability the perfect palms attainable”, Mogensen remarked of Kononenko’s expertise, as he shook the subsequent commander’s hand on Sunday and handed over the station’s ceremonial “key”. Providing their very own private reflections, Furukawa and Borisov famous the “bittersweet” nature of returning to Earth, while Moghbeli confused that the mission had been “an journey of a lifetime, one thing I’ve dreamed about as a baby” and that the ISS as each an entity and an thought provided “a sign of what we are able to do once we work collectively”.
