Four Crew-8 Members Enter Station for Six-Month Mission

The four SpaceX Crew-8 members (front row) join the Expedition 70 crew (back row) for welcome remarks shortly after docking and entering the space station. Credit: NASA TV
The four SpaceX Crew-8 members (front row) join the Expedition 70 crew (back row) for welcome remarks shortly after docking and entering the space station. Credit: NASA TV

NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, and Jeanette Epps, as well as Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin aboard the SpaceX Dragon, named Endeavour, have arrived at the International Space Station.

Crew-8 joins the space station’s Expedition 70 crew of NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Andreas Mogensen, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Konstantin Borisov, Oleg Kononenko, and Nikolai Chub.

NASA+ and NASA Television will continue live coverage through the crew welcome remarks aboard station.


More details about the Crew-8 mission can be found by following the Crew-8 blog, the commercial crew blog, @commercial_crew on X, and commercial crew on Facebook.

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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SpaceX Dragon with Crew-8 Aboard Docks to Station

March 5, 2024: International Space Station Configuration. Six spaceships are parked at the space station including the SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft Endurance and Endeavour, Northrop Grumman's Cygnus space freighter, the Soyuz MS-24 crew ship, and the Progress 86 and 87 resupply ships.
March 5, 2024: International Space Station Configuration. Six spaceships are parked at the space station including the SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft Endurance and Endeavour, Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus space freighter, the Soyuz MS-24 crew ship, and the Progress 86 and 87 resupply ships.

NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, and Jeanette Epps, as well as Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin arrived at the International Space Station, as the SpaceX Dragon, named Endeavour, docked to the complex at 2:28 a.m. EST while the station was 260 statute miles over Newfoundland.

Following Dragon’s link up to the Harmony module, the astronauts aboard the Dragon and the space station will begin conducting standard leak checks and pressurization between the spacecraft in preparation for hatch opening scheduled for 4:13 a.m.

Crew-8 will join the space station’s Expedition 70 crew of NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Andreas Mogensen, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Furukawa Satoshi, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Konstantin Borisov, Oleg Kononenko, and Nikolai Chub. For a short time, the number of crew aboard the space station will increase to 11 people until Crew-7 members Moghbeli, Mogensen, Satoshi, and Borisov return to Earth.

NASA+, NASA Television, and the agency’s website are continuing to provide live continuous coverage of the agency’s SpaceX Crew-8 mission.


More details about the Crew-8 mission can be found by following the Crew-8 blog, the commercial crew blog, @commercial_crew on X, and commercial crew on Facebook.

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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SpaceX Crew-8 Approaching Station Live on NASA TV

The crew of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 mission to the International Space Station poses for a photo during their Crew Equipment Interface Test at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: SpaceX
The crew of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 mission to the International Space Station poses for a photo during their Crew Equipment Interface Test at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: SpaceX

NASA+, NASA Television, and the agency’s website are continuing to provide live coverage of the agency’s SpaceX Crew-8 mission carrying NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, and Jeanette Epps, as well as Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin to the International Space Station.

The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, named Endeavour, is scheduled to dock about 2:30 a.m. EST Tuesday, March 5. 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 at about 1 hour and 45 minutes after docking, the Crew-8 astronauts will join the Expedition 70 crew of NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Andreas Mogensen, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Furukawa Satoshi, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Konstantin Borisov, Oleg Kononenko, and Nikolai Chub.


More details about the Crew-8 mission can be found by following the Crew-8 blog, the commercial crew blog, @commercial_crew on X, and commercial crew on Facebook.

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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Mission Specialist Assigned to NASA’s SpaceX Crew-7 Mission

Astronaut Satoshi Furukawa from JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency)
JAXA (Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa was named a mission specialist for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-7 mission. Photo credit: NASA

Astronaut Satoshi Furukawa from JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) has been selected as a mission specialist for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-7 mission – the agency’s seventh rotational mission to the International Space Station.

Furukawa joins NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Andreas Mogensen, who will serve as spacecraft commander and pilot, respectively. An additional crew member will be assigned at a later date.

Furukawa spent 165 days aboard the orbiting laboratory in 2011 as a flight engineer with Expeditions 28 and 29. As part of his duties, he helped support the final space shuttle mission, STS-135.

This will be the first spaceflight for Moghbeli, who became a NASA astronaut in 2017, and the first long-duration mission for Mogensen. He previously served as a flight engineer on a 10-day mission to the space station in 2015. Crew-7 will be his second trip to space.

NASA and SpaceX are targeting no earlier than mid-August for the launch of Crew-7, aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The four astronauts will join an expedition crew aboard the space station.

For more insight on NASA’s Commercial Crew Program missions to the orbiting laboratory, follow the commercial crew blog. More details can be found @commercial_crew on Twitter and commercial crew on Facebook.

NASA Updates Commercial Crew Flight Manifest to Space Station

NASA meatballNASA and its mission partners are gearing up for a busy 2023 with crew launches and returns from the International Space Station. NASA worked closely with its international partners and commercial crew providers, Boeing and SpaceX, to secure new target launch dates for the upcoming flights that are optimal for space station needs.

NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams
NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams pose for a picture during T-38 pre-flight activities at Ellington Field in Houston on Aug. 16, 2022. Photo credit: NASA/Robert Markowitz

Starliner Flight Date Targets

NASA and Boeing now are targeting April 2023 for the agency’s Crew Flight Test (CFT), the first flight with astronauts on the company’s CST-100 Starliner. The date adjustment deconflicts visiting spacecraft traffic at the space station as NASA and Boeing work together to achieve flight readiness.

The team continues to make progress toward Starliner’s crewed flight following the successful uncrewed Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) to the space station in May. Starliner and United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket hardware remain on track for readiness in early 2023. The joint team continues to close out the OFT-2 anomalies and partner closely together to identify forward work and ensure all requirements for crewed flight are met. NASA and Boeing currently are working on a variety of verification efforts across several critical systems that will be used for Starliner’s crew flight certification.

For CFT, Boeing recently completed the exterior of the Starliner crew module with the installation of the forward heat shield and entry cover. The previously flown crew module, named Calypso, will be connected to a new service module later this year. Formal qualification testing on the CFT version of Starliner’s flight software was completed last month. NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Suni Williams, CFT’s commander and pilot, respectively, and Mike Fincke, backup spacecraft test pilot, along with the Boeing team, also successfully completed the crew validation test during which the astronauts suited up and tested out the pressurized crew module to ensure seat fit, suit functionality, cabin temperature, audio system and day of launch operations.

The CFT astronauts will live and work on the space station for about two weeks. Following a successful crewed flight, NASA will work to complete certification of the Starliner spacecraft and systems for regular crew rotation missions to the space station. A launch date for NASA’s Boeing Starliner-1 mission will be determined following a successful flight test with astronauts and close out of the agency’s certification work.

SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft for NASA's SpaceX Crew-5 mission
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the company’s Dragon spacecraft onboard is seen at Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A on Oct. 1, 2022, four days before liftoff of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission. Photo credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky

SpaceX Flight Date Targets

NASA and SpaceX are targeting mid-February 2023, for launch of the agency’s Crew-6 mission to the International Space Station.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch Dragon and NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan AlNeyadi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrei Fedyaev to the space station from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The crew will spend approximately six months on the space station, starting with a short handover with Crew-5, which arrived at the station in October for a science expedition at the microgravity laboratory.

SpaceX certification and Falcon 9 hardware remain on track for the sixth crew rotation mission of the company’s human space transportation system and its seventh flight with NASA astronauts, including the Demo-2 test flight, to the space station.

The Crew-6 mission will be Dragon Endeavour’s fourth flight to the space station, which previously supported the Demo-2, Crew-2, and Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1) missions, making the spacecraft the fleet leader in number of flights to and from the station. The Dragon spacecraft currently is undergoing refurbishment at SpaceX’s Dragonland facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

NASA and SpaceX also are targeting fall 2023 for launch of the agency’s Crew-7 mission to the International Space Station, ahead of the return of Crew-6.

Find out more about NASA’s Commercial Crew Program at:

https://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew

 

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 Space Station Departure Delayed for Weather

The SpaceX Crew-4 astronauts are seated inside the Dragon Freedom crew ship. The commercial crew quartet (from left) are Mission Specialist Jessica Watkins, Pilot Robert Hines, Commander Kjell Lindgren, and Mission Specialist Samantha Cristorforetti. Photo credit: SpaceX

NASA and SpaceX now are targeting no earlier than 10:05 a.m. EDT Thursday, Oct. 13, for the agency’s Crew-4 undocking from the International Space Station to begin the return trip to Earth completing a nearly six-month science mission in orbit. Splashdown is targeted several hours later at 5:43 p.m. Thursday off the coast of Florida.

Mission teams continue to monitor a cold front passing over Florida with the potential to bring high winds and rainy weather near the splashdown zones off the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Mission teams will continue to monitor splashdown and recovery conditions with another weather review around six hours prior to undocking.

Crew 4’s Dragon undocking depends on a variety of factors, including spacecraft readiness, recovery team readiness, weather, sea states, and other factors. Dragon Freedom remains healthy while currently docked to the space station. Back-up undocking opportunities also are available Friday, Oct. 14.

NASA will provide live coverage of the upcoming return activities for the Crew-4 mission with NASA astronauts Bob Hines, Kjell Lindgren, and Jessica Watkins, as well as ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti.

Dragon’s hatch closing, undocking, and splashdown coverage will air live on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website. NASA also will host an audio only post-splashdown news teleconference. Follow all live events at:

https://www.nasa.gov/live

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 return coverage is as follows (all times Eastern):

Thursday, Oct. 13

8 a.m. – Hatch closure coverage begins for 8:20 a.m. hatch closing
9:45 a.m. – Undocking coverage begins for 10:05 a.m. undocking with a Thursday splashdown
5:43 p.m. – Splashdown off the coast of Florida
7 p.m. – Return to Earth media teleconference call from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston with:

  • Steve Stich, manager, Commercial Crew Program, NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida
  • Joel Montalbano, manger, International Space Station, NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston
  • SpaceX Representative

SpaceX Crew Nears Launch as Station Research Under Way

The SpaceX Dragon Endurance crew ship atop the Falcon 9 rocket stands at the launch at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky
The SpaceX Dragon Endurance crew ship atop the Falcon 9 rocket stands at the launch at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky

The next crew to the launch to the International Space Station is at the Kennedy Space Center counting down to liftoff this week. Back onboard the orbiting lab, the seven-member Expedition 68 crew is busy conducting advanced space research to improve life for humans on and off the Earth.

Four SpaceX Crew-5 crew members arrived in Florida on Saturday ahead of their launch aboard the Dragon Endurance at noon EDT on Wednesday. NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada will command and pilot Endurance respectively. They will ride along with Mission Specialists Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Anna Kikina of Roscosmos. The commercial crew quartet will dock to the forward port of the Harmony module 29 hours after launch to begin their station mission.

After the Dragon Endurance docks to the orbiting lab, another four station crew members will turn their attention to ending their mission and returning to Earth just over a week later. NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines, and Jessica Watkins, with ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, who have been living on the station since April 27, will help their Crew-5 replacements adjust to life on the station. The homebound astronauts will then undock inside the SpaceX Dragon Freedom crew ship and parachute to a splashdown off the coast of Florida.

In the meantime, Lindgren and Hines began Monday focusing on how living in space is affecting their muscles. The duo used an Ultrasound device and the Myotones device to scan and measure the biochemical properties of their leg, neck, and back muscles. Watkins nourished vegetables and took photos of the plants growing for the XROOTS space agriculture study taking place in the Columbus laboratory module. NASA Flight Engineer Frank Rubio swapped glass fiber samples in the Microgravity Science Glovebox for the Intelligent Glass Optics space manufacturing investigation. Station Commander Cristoforetti serviced samples inside the Electrostatic Levitation Furnace that supports high-temperature thermophysical research in space.

The station’s two cosmonauts, two-time station visitor Sergey Prokopyev and first-time space flyer Dmitri Petelin, had their hands full on Monday keeping up with lab maintenance while continuing their station familiarization activities. Prokopyev inspected windows inside the Zvezda service module then set up Earth observation gear. Petelin worked on orbital plumbing duties before inventorying and restocking station docking hardware.


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.

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Crew Returns to Space Science Day after Starliner Lands

Boeing's Starliner spacecraft descends to Earth underneath parachutes for a landing in New Mexico completing the Orbital Flight Test-2 mission. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls
Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft descends to Earth underneath parachutes for a landing in New Mexico completing the Orbital Flight Test-2 mission. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

The seven Expedition 67 crew members are resuming their normal schedule of science and maintenance activities following Wednesday’s departure of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. The orbital residents focused on vein scans, robotics, and a host of other space research onboard the International Space Station today.

NASA and Boeing completed its Orbital Flight Test-2 mission on Wednesday. NASA Flight Engineers Kjell Lindgren and Bob Hines monitored the crew ship’s arrival last week, conducted cargo and test operations inside the vehicle, then closed the hatch on Tuesday before finally seeing Starliner undock from the Harmony module’s forward port at 2:36 p.m. EDT on Wednesday.

Lindgren started Thursday with a hearing assessment for the Acoustic Diagnostics experiment then setup the Astrobee robotic free-flyers for the Kibo Robot Programming Challenge 3. Hines set up hardware that will measure blood flow in the brain for the Cerebral Autoregulation investigation.

Both astronauts later joined astronauts Jessica Watkins of NASA and Samantha Cristoforetti of ESA (European Space Agency) for vein scans on Thursday. The quartet used the Ultrasound 2 device to scan each other’s neck, shoulder and leg veins. Doctors on the ground monitored the downlinked biomedical scans in real time to gain insight into how the astronaut’s bodies are adapting to microgravity.

Watkins and Cristoforetti began their day collecting their blood and urine samples, spinning them in a centrifuge, and stowing the samples in a science freezer for future analysis. The duo then joined Lindgren in checking out the U.S. spacesuits.

The station’s three cosmonauts from Roscosmos also contributed to the array of space research taking place today on the orbiting lab. The trio, including Commander Oleg Artemyev, with Flight Engineers Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov, took turns exploring ultrasound techniques to improve locating landmarks on Earth for photography. Artemyev also completed a session that monitored his cardiac activity for 24 hours. Matveev assisted Korsakov, attached to a variety of sensors, as he worked out on an exercise cycle for a fitness evaluation.


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.

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Starliner Lands in New Mexico, Completes Station Mission

Boeing's #Starliner crew ship parachutes to a landing in New Mexico completing the company's Orbital Flight Test-2 mission. Credit: NASA TV
Boeing’s #Starliner crew ship parachutes to a landing in New Mexico completing the company’s Orbital Flight Test-2 mission. Credit: NASA TV

Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft completed its touchdown at 6:49 p.m. Wednesday, May 25, at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico, wrapping up the uncrewed Orbital Flight Test-2 as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.

Starliner settled gently onto its air bags following a parachute-assisted landing that helps set the stage for future crewed landings. The landing followed a deorbit burn at 6:05 p.m., separation of the spacecraft’s service module, and successful deployment of its three main parachutes and six airbags.

NASA and Boeing will host a postlanding news conference at 9 p.m. on NASA TV from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston with:

  • Steve Stich, manager, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program
  • Joel Montalbano, manager, NASA’s International Space Station Program
  • Suni Williams, NASA astronaut
  • Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager, Boeing

Starliner launched on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket on a flight test to the International Space Station at 6:54 p.m. on Thursday, May 19, from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The uncrewed spacecraft successfully docked to the space station’s Harmony module at 8:28 p.m. Friday, May 20.


More details about the mission and NASA’s commercial crew program can be found by following the commercial crew blog, @commercial_crew and commercial crew on Facebook.

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.

Get weekly video highlights at: http://jscfeatures.jsc.nasa.gov/videoupdate/

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Starliner Fires Engines, Returning to Earth for Landing

Boeing's Starliner crew ship approaches the space station on the company's Orbital Flight Test-2 mission on May 20, 2022.
Boeing’s Starliner crew ship approaches the space station on the company’s Orbital Flight Test-2 mission on May 20, 2022.

NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website continue to provide live coverage of the landing of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft.

At 6:05 p.m. EDT, the spacecraft began its deorbit burn that puts Starliner on the right path to land at 6:49 p.m. White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico. The service module has successfully separated from the crew module containing Rosie the rocketeer, an anthropometric test device who will help maintain Starliner’s center of gravity from ascent through landing. During OFT-1, Rosie was outfitted with 15 sensors to collect data on what astronauts will experience during flights on Starliner.

At 6:44 p.m. the drogue parachute will be released, pulling out the spacecraft’s three main parachutes at 6:45 p.m. that will slow the capsule to a safe landing on Earth.


More details about the mission and NASA’s commercial crew program can be found by following the commercial crew blog, @commercial_crew and commercial crew on Facebook.

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.

Get weekly video highlights at: http://jscfeatures.jsc.nasa.gov/videoupdate/

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