Clockwise from left, Expedition 68 Flight Engineers Anna Kikina, Josh Cassada, Nicole Mann, and Koichi Wakata pose for a fun portrait aboard the station. The quartet is planning on returning to Earth this month.
Watch live coverage now on NASA TV, the NASA app and the agency’s website as hatch closure and undocking preparations are underway for the return of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission.
NASA astronauts Mission Commander Nicole Mann and Pilot Josh Cassada, along with JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Koichi Wakata and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina, who will serve as mission specialists, are in the process of boarding the Dragon for departure from the International Space Station.
Crew-5 is targeting a return to Earth at about 9:02 p.m. EST Saturday, March 11, with a splashdown off the coast of Florida. The Dragon spacecraft, named Endurance, is scheduled to undock from the International Space Station at 2:05 a.m. to begin the journey home.
Dragon will autonomously undock, depart the space station, and splash down at one of seven targeted landing zones in the Atlantic Ocean or Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida. Endurance also will return important and time-sensitive research to Earth.
The 11-member crew aboard the International Space Station give thumbs up signs in this portrait from March 6, 2023. In the bottom row from left are Flight Engineers Andrey Fedyaev of Roscosmos, Sultan Alneyadi from UAE (United Arab Emirates), and Woody Hoburg from NASA. In the middle row from left are Flight Engineers Anna Kikina from Roscosmos, Koichi Wakata from JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), Nicole Mann from NASA, Dmitri Petelin from Roscosmos, and Frank Rubio from NASA. In the back are Flight Engineer Stephen Bowen from NASA, Commander Sergey Prokopyev from Roscosmos, and Flight Engineer Josh Cassada from NASA.
It was a relaxed Friday aboard the International Space Station as crew swap activities begin winding down ahead of the return to Earth of four crew members on Saturday. Three cosmonauts remained busy at the end of the week, however, working on orbital household maintenance tasks.
Expedition 68 Flight Engineers Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada of NASA, Koichi Wakata of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), and Anna Kikina of Roscosmos are in their final full day aboard the space station. The quartet had a light duty day getting in a final exercise session before going to sleep early to prepare for their overnight departure activities.
The foursome will enter the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endurance and close the hatch to the vehicle at 12:15 a.m. EST on Saturday. Then at 2:05 a.m. they will undock from the Harmony module’s forward port. Endurance will fire its main engines one last time at 8:25 p.m. on Saturday sending the crew back into the Earth’s atmosphere. Finally, the crew will splashdown off the coast of Florida at 9:19 p.m. where support personnel from NASA and SpaceX will greet them after a five-month space research mission. NASA TV, on the agency’s app and website, will broadcast the crew return activities live.
The orbiting lab’s four newest crewmates have completed their first week of station orientation and familiarization tasks. New Flight Engineers Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg from NASA, Sultan Alneyadi of UAE (United Arab Emirates) and Andrey Fedyaev docked to the station aboard the SpaceX Dragon Endeavour on Oct. 3. All but Fedyaev had the day off as they will get up early and support their departing four crewmates when they enter the Crew Dragon Endurance and undock from the station.
Flight Engineer Frank Rubio, who has been aboard the station since Sept. 21, also had a light duty day spending just over an hour on the Food Physiology study before going to bed early with his departing crewmates. Rubio will be assisting the homebound crew before their Saturday departure.
Cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, station commander and flight engineer respectively, spent Friday working their normal shift servicing a variety of station electronics hardware. Fedyaev spent his day troubleshooting power supply systems and cleaning ventilation fans and filters.
Expedition 68 Flight Engineers (from left) Anna Kikina, Josh Cassada, Nicole Mann, and Koichi Wakata, are preparing to return to Earth this weekend.
Four Expedition 68 crew members are nearing the end of their stay aboard the International Space Station this weekend. Their replacements are completing their first week aboard the orbital outpost and getting up to speed with life in space.
The SpaceX Crew Dragon Endurance with four crewmates is targeted to depart the space station at 2:05 a.m. EST on Saturday and return to Earth less than 24 hours later. NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada will command and pilot Endurance respectively flanked by Koichi Wakata of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Anna Kikina of Roscosmos. The foursome is due to splashdown off the coast of Florida at 9:19 p.m. on Saturday.
The quartet blasted off toward the orbiting lab as the SpaceX Crew-5 mission on Oct. 5, 2022, and docked to the Harmony module’s forward port on Oct. 6. A variety of crew ships and space freighters arrived and departed, numerous spacewalks were conducted, and a multitude of advanced space research took place during Crew-5’s five-month-long stay in space.
The station’s newest crew members are several days into their orbital residency after their arrival on March 3, as the SpaceX Crew-6 mission. The new flight engineers, Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg of NASA, Sultan Alneyadi of UAE (United Arab Emirates), and Andrey Fedyaev of Roscosmos, have already begun a variety of space research and lab maintenance activities.
The four new station residents have started exploring how microgravity affects the human body and picked a small tomato crop growing for a space agriculture study. They also spent Thursday afternoon familiarizing themselves with space station hardware and emergency equipment located throughout the space lab.
Three other space station residents, Commander Sergey Prokopyev, Flight Engineer Dmitri Petelin, both from Roscosmos, and NASA Flight Engineer Frank Rubio, have been living in space since Sept. 21. The trio spent the day stowing biological samples in a science freezer, packing cargo inside the Soyuz MS-22 spaceship, and servicing life support components. They will continue their station mission until later this year and return home inside the Soyuz MS-23 crew ship.
Expedition 68 Flight Engineers Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann, both from NASA, work on life support maintenance inside the Destiny laboratory module.
The four new Expedition 68 crew members are getting used to life in space while four other crewmates are preparing to go home this month. Also, today’s research includes replacing fuel bottles in the Combustion Integrated Rack and collecting samples for the Food Physiology and Host Pathogen experiment.
Flight engineers Frank Rubio of NASA and Dmitri Petelin of Roscosmos removed the rack and replaced it with a new high-percentage oxygen bottle. The Combustion Integration Rack is used to perform combustion investigations in microgravity, and results could improve understanding of early fire growth behavior and help determine the best fire suppression techniques, improving crew safety in future space facilities.
Rubio also participated in the Food Physiology experiment. A variety of samples are collected and then placed in cold stowage to document the effect of dietary improvements on human physiology and the ability of those improvements to enhance adaptation to spaceflight.
Samples were also collected for the Host Pathogen experiment. This study identifies the spaceflight-induced changes in the human microbiome that causes a decrease in immune function and an increase in microbial virulence. Blood and saliva samples from crew members are collected before, during, and after spaceflight, to assess the clinical risks of infectious microbes and to develop countermeasures that restore immune function in astronauts.
The new Endeavour crew is continuing to adjust to life in orbit, while the Endurance Crew is preparing for its return to earth by cleaning, completing stowage and inventory tasks, and preparing personal items for return.
NASA and SpaceX continue to evaluate the weather for the return of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission from the International Space Station. Teams conducted a weather briefing overnight and decided to waive off the initial undocking opportunity for early Thursday, March 9, due to high winds at the splashdown sites. Teams currently target undocking for no earlier than Thursday evening, pending weather. The Crew-5 Dragon spacecraft remains healthy docked to the station and is configured for nominal return operations once weather conditions are favorable.
The space station is orbiting slightly higher today after the docked ISS Progress 83 cargo craft fired its engines for five minutes and 17 seconds this afternoon. The new orbital altitude readies the unoccupied Soyuz MS-22 crew ship for its upcoming departure following a coolant leak that was detected in December of last year.
Clockwise from left, Expedition 68 Flight Engineers Anna Kikina, Josh Cassada, Nicole Mann, and Koichi Wakata pose for a fun portrait aboard the station. The quartet is planning on returning to Earth this month.
The International Space Station’s 11 residents are comprised of three individual crews that arrived at the orbital outpost on three different crew ships. The most recent crew to arrive was SpaceX Crew-6 docking on Friday at 1:40 a.m. EST in the Crew Dragon Endeavour vehicle.
The four Crew-6 members are now Expedition 68 flight engineers embarking on a six-month space research mission. The new station crewmates are Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg of NASA along with Sultan Alneyadi of UAE (United Arab Emirates) and Andrey Fedyaev of Roscosmos. They are familiarizing themselves with station operations, systems, and emergency procedures.
The new quartet is also beginning standard science and maintenance activities. Bowen and Hoburg started a new experiment today conducting ultrasound scans and collecting blood pressure measurements to learn how an astronaut’s eyes, brain, and blood vessels change during a space mission. Alneyadi harvested tomatoes collecting them for both scientific analysis and crew consumption for the Veg-05 space botany study. Fedyaev wore a sensor-packed cap and practiced futuristic piloting techniques on a computer a crew member might use to control spacecraft or robots on planetary missions.
Another four crewmates are due to complete their station mission this month. Astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada of NASA, and Koichi Wakata of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), and cosmonaut Anna Kikina of Roscosmos, launched into space on Oct. 5 from the Kennedy Space Center and joined the Expedition 68 crew after docking on Oct. 6.
The homebound foursome is handing over their responsibilities to the station’s newest crew members as well as gathering cargo and personal items to take back to Earth inside Endurance. Mann and Wakata are also finalizing science work as they serviced a variety of research samples and replaced experiment hardware today. Mann also joined Cassada and tested and changed out orbital plumbing components. Kikina tested a specialized suit that may help crew members adapt quicker to the return to Earth’s gravity.
Station Commander Sergey Prokopyev has been on the orbiting lab since arriving on Sept. 21 aboard the Soyuz MS-22 crew ship with flight engineers Dmitri Petelin of Roscosmos and Frank Rubio of NASA. Prokopyev and Petelin spent Tuesday maintaining various electrical and life support systems. Rubio worked on human research throughout the day swapping samples in science freezers, photographing Bowen and Hoburg during their experiment work, and finally collecting blood specimens for stowage and analysis. The station trio are continuing their stay in space and will return to Earth later this year aboard the Soyuz MS-23 crew ship.
The SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour with four Crew-6 members aboard approaches the International Space Station on March 3, 2023.
The newly-expanded International Space Station crew of 11 members kicked off a busy work week today conducting a variety of research and visiting vehicle activities. Meanwhile, four Expedition 68 crew members are also getting ready to complete their mission and return to Earth.
New station residents Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg of NASA, who commanded and piloted the SpaceX Crew-6 mission respectively, reviewed docked Crew Dragon procedures first thing on Monday. The duo, along Crew-6 mission specialist Sultan Alneyadi of UAE (United Arab Emirates) and Andrey Fedyaev of Roscosmos, automatically docked Crew Dragon Endeavour to the Harmony module’s space-facing port at 1:40 a.m. EST on Friday. The quartet will live and work aboard the orbital outpost for six months.
The four newest crew members continue getting up to speed with life on orbit familiarizing themselves with space station operations and systems. The foursome also spent Monday installing new space biology hardware, replacing electronic components, and updating emergency procedures for the expanded crew.
The orbiting crew will soon return to a seven-member status when four station residents finalize their mission that began last year. Flight Engineers Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada of NASA, along with Koichi Wakata of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Anna Kikina of Roscosmos, launched to the station as the SpaceX Crew-5 mission on Oct. 5 joining the Expedition 68 crew one day later. All four homebound crew members have begun their handover activities. They will enter the Crew Dragon Endurance, undock from the Harmony module’s forward port, then splash down off the coast of Florida on a soon-to-be-announced date.
The next Dragon mission to the station will be the SpaceX CRS-27 resupply mission scheduled for March 14 at 8:30 p.m. EDT. The Dragon cargo craft will automatically dock about 24 hours later to the Harmony port vacated by the Crew Dragon Endurance when it undocks a few days earlier.
The space station’s other three crewmates, Commander Sergey Prokopyev and Flight Engineer Dmitri Petelin of Roscosmos, and NASA Flight Engineer Frank Rubio joined each other and practiced on a computer the procedures for returning to Earth inside the Soyuz MS-23 crew ship. Rubio earlier had removed his seat liner from the Crew Dragon Endurance and installed it inside the MS-23. Prokopyev and Petelin also conducted tests inside the Soyuz MS-22 crew ship that will return to Earth unoccupied in late March.
The orbital outpost maneuvered out of the way of an Earth observation satellite early Monday. The docked ISS Progress 83 resupply ship fired its engines for just over six minutes slightly raising the station’s orbit to avoid the approaching satellite. The new orbital trajectory will not impact the upcoming departure of the Crew-5 mission.
NASA is considering extending the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS)-2 contracts to ensure continuous cargo resupply services to the International Space Station. For more information, visit https://www.sam.gov.
The four SpaceX Crew-6 members joined the seven Expedition 68 crew members aboard the space station expanding its population to 11. Credit: NASA TV
NASA astronauts, Mission Commander Stephen Bowen and Pilot Woody Hoburg, along with UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev aboard the SpaceX Dragon, named Endeavour, have arrived at the International Space Station.
The four SpaceX Crew-6 members (from left) Andrey Fedyaev, Woody Hoburg, Stephen Bowen, and Sultan Alnedayi, are pictured inside the Crew Dragon Endeavour prior to launching.
NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, along with UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev arrived at the International Space Station on Friday, as the SpaceX Dragon, named Endeavour, docked to the complex at 1:40 a.m. EST while the station was 260 statute miles over the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Somalia.
Docking was delayed slightly as mission teams completed troubleshooting of a faulty docking hook sensor on Dragon. The NASA and SpaceX teams verified that all of the docking hooks were in the proper configuration, and SpaceX developed a software override for the faulty sensor that allowed the docking process to successfully continue.
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 3:18 a.m.
Crew-6 will join the Expedition 68 crew of NASA astronauts Frank Rubio, Nicole Mann, and Josh Cassada, as well as Koichi Wakata of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitri Petelin, and Anna Kikina. For a short time, the number of crew on the space station will increase to 11 people until Crew-5 departs.
NASA Television and the agency’s website are continuing to provide live continuous coverage of the agency’s SpaceX Crew-6 mission.
The four SpaceX Crew-6 members (from left) Andrey Fedyaev, Stephen Bowen, Warren “Woody” Hoburg, and Sultan Alneyadi, pose for a portrait at the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California. Credit: SpaceX
Four Expedition 68 astronauts took the afternoon off on Tuesday at the International Space Station while three cosmonauts focused on cargo transfers and lab maintenance. Meanwhile, the SpaceX Crew-6 mission is counting down to its launch at 12:34 a.m. EST on Thursday.
NASA Flight Engineer Frank Rubio handled the orbital plumbing duties inside the Tranquility module. Flight Engineer Koichi Wakata of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) spent the day preparing urine samples to be stored in cold stowage for later use in research.
Wakata also assisted Nicole Mann in successfully removing and replacing the Simplified Aid for EVA Rescue, or SAFER, battery adapter in preparation for spacewalk activities. The SAFER is essentially a “life jacket” for spacewalks. The self-contained maneuvering unit is worn like a backpack and relies on small jet thrusters to let an astronaut move around in space.
NASA Flight engineers Josh Cassada and Mann are busy preparing with cosmonaut Anna Kikina to return to Earth for the upcoming crew swap. The trio, along with Wakata, are due to return to Earth several days after the SpaceX Crew-6 mission arrives at the end of the week.
The Crew-6 members scheduled for arrival to the space station are mission commander Stephen Bowen and Pilot Warren “Woody” Hoburg, both from NASA, along with UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, who will join as mission specialists. The quartet is targeted to automatically dock to the space-facing port of the Harmony module at 1:17 a.m. on Friday. The four Crew-6 members will conduct advanced space research aboard the orbital outpost for the next six months.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon Endeavour atop is pictured during a sunset at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky
The seven-member Expedition 68 crew will wait a few more days for the arrival of the SpaceX Crew-6 mission. Meanwhile, the International Space Station residents began the work week with a variety of research activities, lab maintenance, and cargo operations.
The space station’s four astronauts and three cosmonauts will soon welcome four SpaceX Crew-6 members who are counting down to a launch at 12:34 a.m. EST on Thursday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The quartet was due to lift off on Monday at 1:45 a.m. aboard the Crew Dragon Endeavour before launch controllers detected an issue preventing data from confirming a full load of the ignition source for the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage Merlin engines.
Back aboard the orbital outpost, Flight Engineers Nicole Mann of NASA and Koichi Wakata of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) spent about an hour readying food and sleeping bags for the visiting crew. Mann also relocated computers to the cupola to prepare for the upcoming rendezvous and docking monitoring operations. Wakata configured research hardware that will house a new space biology investigation being delivered aboard the Crew Dragon Endeavour.
Mann began her day with NASA Flight Engineer Josh Cassada performing blood draws, spinning the samples in a centrifuge, then stowing the samples in a science freezer for later analysis. Cassada would later gather cargo to be stowed aboard the Crew Dragon Endeavour after its arrival. NASA Flight Engineer Frank Rubio started his day on orbital plumbing work before finally watering tomato plants growing for the Veg-05 space botany study.
Roscosmos Commander Sergey Prokopyev and Flight Engineer Dmitri Petelin spent Monday unpacking cargo recently delivered aboard the ISS Progress 83 resupply ship. Petelin then joined Flight Engineer Anna Kikina and tested a specialized suit that offsets the affects of microgravity potentially helping crew members adjust quicker to gravity after returning to Earth.
