Month: August 2023

Crew Handovers Continue as Four Members Near End of Six-Month Research Mission

Expedition 69 Flight Engineers (from left) Andrey Fedyaev of Roscosmos and Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, both from NASA, are pictured in the SpaceX pressure suits they will wear when they return to Earth aboard the company's Dragon Endeavour spacecraft in September.
Expedition 69 Flight Engineers (from left) Andrey Fedyaev of Roscosmos and Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, both from NASA, are pictured in the SpaceX pressure suits they will wear when they return to Earth aboard the company’s Dragon Endeavour spacecraft in September.

The eleven orbital residents aboard the International Space Station spent Thursday gearing up for a crew split as the four newest members continue to settle into their daily routines in weightlessness and four other Expedition 69 crew members prepare for their ride home to Earth.

Two crews are in the process of swapping places as NASA astronauts Woody Hoburg and Stephen Bowen, UAE (United Arab Emirates) Flight Engineer Sultan Alneyadi, and Roscosmos Flight Engineer Andrey Fedyaev spent most of their day handing over responsibilities, including training new crew members on station procedures and the use of station exercise equipment.

Sunday saw the arrival of NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen, JAXA astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov to the station as the SpaceX Dragon Endurance Spacecraft docked to the Harmony module. The international quartet is quickly adjusting to orbital tasks and spent some of Thursday on the firsts of many science and maintenance activities they’ll perform in microgravity during their six-month stay.

After breakfast, Moghbeli completed a round of eye exams with NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, Commander Sergey Prokopyev and Flight Engineer Dmitri Petelin of Roscosmos. Later in the evening, the first-time orbital resident continued to unpack Dragon, which will remain docked to the station for six months until Crew-7 returns to Earth. Meanwhile, Mogensen deployed dosimeters in the Columbus Laboratory Module that will detect levels of radiation doses inside the station, while Furukawa carried out some maintenance on the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device or ARED.

The four Crew-6 members—Hoburg, Bowen, Alneyadi and Fedyaev—are nearing the end of their six-month research mission and spent the afternoon prepping and packing SpaceX’s Dragon Endeavour spacecraft for departure no earlier than Sept. 2. This will bring the space station’s population down to seven before further crew swaps take place in September.

After lunchtime, Alneyadi scheduled some time for maintenance activities, installing and examining the station’s new Potable Water Dispenser. Hoburg collected biological samples for the ongoing Standard Measures investigation, while Bowen completed cargo tasks in the Cygnus spacecraft which has been docked to the station since Aug. 4.

Rubio, Prokopyev, and Petelin will soon reach a year in space after arriving to the station on Sept. 21, 2022, and are gearing up for their trek home in late September. The three long-time station residents continued to help with crew handover activities on Thursday and completed some station maintenance tasks of their own.

Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on X, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

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Ongoing Crew Swap, Science Activities on Station this Week

Expedition 69 astronauts (from left) Frank Rubio and Sultan Alneyadi pose for a portrait during pizza night aboard the International Space Station.
Expedition 69 astronauts (from left) Frank Rubio and Sultan Alneyadi pose for a portrait during pizza night aboard the International Space Station.

Aboard the International Space Station on Wednesday, four new crew members are adjusting to their first week orbiting Earth. Meanwhile, another quartet of Expedition 69 flight engineers is preparing to end their six-month stay in space.

Eleven crew members from five countries are living and working together on the orbital outpost as two of its crews are in the middle of swapping places. New station flight engineers Jasmin Moghbeli and Andreas Mogensen, of NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) respectively, continued unpacking the SpaceX Dragon Endurance spacecraft throughout the day. In the afternoon, the duo joined NASA Flight Engineer Frank Rubio, who has been aboard the station for nearly a year, and reviewed station operations, systems, and procedures.

The other two new flight engineers, Satoshi Furukawa of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Konstantin Borisov of Roscosmos, also continued familiarizing themselves with life in weightlessness. The pair is learning how to make meals, exercise on the workout facilities, sleep in the crew quarters, and use the station’s bathroom, also known as the waste and hygiene compartment.

The station crew will fall back to seven members no earlier than Sept. 2 when the SpaceX Dragon Endeavour is due to return four flight engineers, who have been in space since March, back to Earth. NASA astronaut Stephen Bowen will command Endeavour leading NASA Pilot Woody Hoburg and Mission Specialists Sultan Alneyadi of UAE (United Arab Emirates) and Andrey Fedyaev of Roscosmos to a splashdown off the coast of Florida.

The Earth-bound foursome has been handing over its responsibilities to the newly arrived crew while preparing for the return to Earth’s gravity environment. The four crew mates this week have been packing Endeavour, reviewing deorbit and splashdown procedures, and talking to NASA and SpaceX ground support personnel.

Bowen and Hoburg still had time on Wednesday for ongoing research activities. Bowen rounded up science hardware for an upcoming space biology experiment. Hoburg inspected and activated an Astrobee free-flying robotic helper as engineers on the ground monitored its performance.

The longest-serving crew aboard the station has been orbiting Earth since Sept. 21, 2022. Rubio along with Commander Sergey Prokopyev and Flight Engineer Dmitri Petelin are assisting with the crew swap activities. The trio from NASA and Roscosmos has also worked on cargo activities, space science, and standard health checks this week.

Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on X, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

Get weekly video highlights at: https://roundupreads.jsc.nasa.gov/videoupdate/

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Space Station Crew Members Focused on In-Orbit Handover

NASA astronaut and Crew-7 Commander, Jasmin Moghbeli, poses for a photo in the first moments the Crew-7 quartet is onboard the International Space Station after hatch opening on August 27, 2023.
NASA astronaut and Crew-7 Commander, Jasmin Moghbeli, poses for a photo in the first moments the Crew-7 quartet is onboard the International Space Station after hatch opening on August 27, 2023. Photo credit: NASA

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-7 crew members are settling into their new orbital home aboard the International Space Station while Crew-6 make their own preparations for a safe return to Earth in the coming days.

Crew-7 NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Andreas Mogensen, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov moved into the space station on Aug. 27. The crew launched on Aug. 26 from Launch Complex 39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Meanwhile, NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev are wrapping up crew handover activities with Crew-7 which involves concluding science experiments, and transferring return cargo to their Dragon spacecraft. Their spacecraft has been docked with the space station since arriving in March 2023.

NASA and SpaceX are targeting Saturday, Sept. 2, for Crew-6 and SpaceX’s Dragon to undock from the space station and safely splashdown off the coast of Florida on Sunday, Sept. 3. Joint teams are monitoring weather forecasts across seven potential splashdown sites off the coast of Florida and any impacts Hurricane Idalia may have on recovery operations.

The agency will share more information on Crew-6 return as it becomes available.