4 New Crewmates Regulate to Station Life Following Crew-9 Return

4 Expedition 72 crewmates are getting used to life aboard the Worldwide House Station following their arrival on Saturday and the departure of the SpaceX Crew-9 mission on Tuesday. In the meantime, a U.S. cargo craft is poised to be launched from the orbital outpost ending a seven-and-a-half-month keep.

New NASA Flight Engineers Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers started Wednesday unpacking cargo stowed contained in the SpaceX Dragon Endurance spacecraft. Afterward, the duo transferred commonplace emergency {hardware} from the station into Dragon and reconfigured the spacecraft for docked operations. After a noon meal McClain and Ayers spent the remainder of the day getting used to life on orbit and familiarizing themselves with area station programs.

Their SpaceX Crew-10 crewmates, Takuya Onishi of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration company) and Kirill Peskov of Roscosmos additionally participated in Dragon cargo transfers and station orientation actions. Onishi helped unpack Dragon, reviewed upcoming science operations, then labored out on the superior resistive train machine. Kirill examined computer systems that obtain video from the European robotic arm, labored on life help programs, then acquired on top of things with life in microgravity.

The brand new Crew-10 quartet replaces the Crew-9 mission which undocked from the Concord module early Tuesday within the Dragon spacecraft and splashed down off the coast of Florida close to Tallahassee on the identical day. NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 commander Nick Hague returned to Earth with NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. Hague and Gorbunov accomplished a 171-day mission that started on Sept. 28, 2024. Williams and Wilmore wrapped up 286 days in area following their mission that started on June 5, 2024.

Yet one more spacecraft is because of depart the Worldwide House Station this week because the Cygnus area freighter nears the top of its cargo mission that started on Aug. 4, 2024. The uncrewed, trash-filled Cygnus is because of be eliminated by the Canadarm2 robotic arm from the Unity module’s Earth-facing port then launched into Earth orbit at 7:55 a.m. EDT on Friday. Cygnus will reenter Earth’s ambiance above the South Pacific Ocean two days later for a fiery, however secure demise.

The station’s different three residents have been orbiting Earth since Sept. 11, 2024, once they launched from Kazakhstan and docked to the Rassvet module aboard the Soyuz MS-26 crew ship. Now, NASA Flight Engineer Don Pettit and Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner are approaching the top of their mission scheduled for April 19. Once they undock from the station of their Soyuz spacecraft Expedition 73 will formally start.

First up would be the arrival of the Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft resulting from launch on April 8 carrying NASA astronaut Jonny Kim and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky. Kim and Zubritsky might be starting their first area mission whereas Ryzhikov might be serving on his third expedition to the orbiting lab.

Study extra about station actions by following the area station weblog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on X, in addition to the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

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March 19, 2025