Expedition 75 is in the midst of a crew swap aboard the Worldwide Area Station as 4 new crew members get used to life in microgravity and one other quartet prepares for its return to Earth. The 11 crew members have been busy packing and unpacking the 2 SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked to the orbital outpost’s Concord module and making ready for upcoming cargo mission actions.
New Expedition 75 crew members Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney of NASA, Josh Kutryk of CSA (Canadian Area Company), and Sergey Teteryatnikov of Roscosmos have been residing and dealing on the house station since Thursday, Oct. 1. They started their mission as NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 after launching aboard a SpaceX Dragon and docking to Concord’s ahead port on the orbital outpost the identical day. The 4 crewmates have been unpacking Dragon and familiarizing themselves with house station techniques as they start a six-month house analysis mission.
Now, the SpaceX Crew-12 quartet, which has been aboard the orbital outpost since Feb. 14, is packing up for its departure scheduled for 8:05 a.m. EDT on Wednesday, Oct. 7. NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway will respectively command and pilot Dragon alongside mission specialists Sophie Adenot of ESA (European Area Company) and Andrey Fedyaev of Roscosmos. The foursome will undock from Concord’s space-facing port then orbit Earth for simply over a day inside Dragon. Crew-12 will reenter Earth’s environment then parachute contained in the spacecraft to a splashdown within the Pacific Ocean at 11:34 a.m. on Thursday, Oct. 8, ending an almost eight-month keep in house.
Roscosmos cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov accepted command of the Worldwide Area Station from Meir on Sunday, Oct. 4, throughout a standard change of command ceremony. Dubrov will likely be staying in house with flight engineers Anna Kikina of Roscosmos and Anil Menon of NASA till spring 2027.
The subsequent spacecraft to depart from the orbiting advanced will likely be Northrop Grumman’s uncrewed Cygnus XL resupply ship which has been hooked up to the Unity module since April 13. NASA flight engineers Menon and Hathaway loaded trash and discarded gear inside Cygnus XL on Monday. The cargo spacecraft is scheduled to be launched from the station into Earth orbit with the Canadarm2 robotic arm on the finish of the week.
Quickly after that, SpaceX will launch Dragon on its 35th industrial resupply mission to ship science and provides to the Expedition 75 crew. Kutryk on Monday studied instruments and procedures to watch Dragon’s strategy and rendezvous following its upcoming launch from Florida. Meir reorganized the Kibo laboratory module the place a few of Dragon’s cargo will likely be stowed after its arrival.
Be taught extra about station actions by following the house station weblog, @space_station on X, in addition to the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.
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