Seven astronauts and cosmonauts are preparing for the launch on April 9 and April 22 to the International Space Station, replacing seven outgoing crew members who will land in Kazakhstan and the coast of Florida on April 17 and April 28.
The rugby team rotations will provide a busy month at the research complex. Preparations for the arrival of the new crew members are already underway at the space station.
The first time is the move of a SpaceX Crew Dragon spaceship to a new landing port at the space station on Monday. NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins, commander of the Crew Dragon “Resilience” spaceship, will be accompanied by crew members Victor Glover, Soichi Noguchi and Shannon Walker for the fully automatic 45-minute relocation maneuver.
The dragon astronauts, launched on November 15 as part of SpaceX’s “Crew-1” mission, will be aboard the Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft and fit for re-entry, just in case the capsule encounters problems to join the new docking port. and must return to earth.
The Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft leaves the space station from the front port of the Harmony module and flies to a position above the outpost, then enters to dock with a port at the top of the Harmony module. . The relocation will pave the way for the next Crew Dragon mission to connect to the space station’s forward-facing port.
Once the Crew-1 mission leaves the station at the end of April, the port facing upwards will be released for the arrival of a Dragon cargo ship in June. This mission will deliver new solar power supplies to the space station, and attaching on top of the Harmony module gives the station’s robotic arm the ability to grab into the Dragon capsule’s boot to extract the solar panels.
The next step is the launch of a Russian Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft with Commander Oleg Novitskiy, cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov and NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei. The Soyuz crew is expected to depart from the Baikonur Food Modroom in Kazakhstan on April 9 at 03:42 EDT (0742 GMT).
Novitskiy, 49, begins his third expedition to the space station after spending 340 days in orbit on his two previous missions. Vande Hei, 54, is a retired U.S. Army colonel who recorded 168 days in orbit on a space station mission in 2017 and 2018. Dubrov, 43, is preparing for his first trip to space.
The Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft will be launched at a rapid encounter with the space station, using a perfect Baikonur timing to dock the orbit quickly at 07:07 EDT (1107 GMT).
The crew on the space station will temporarily swell to 10 people until the outgoing Soyuz MS-17 crew leaves the research laboratory one week later.
The unlocking of the Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft with Commander Sergey Ryzhikov, flight engineer Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and NASA astronaut Kate Rubins is scheduled for 21:33 EDT on April 16 (0133 GMT on April 17). The Soyuz capsule will parachute on April 17 at 12:56 EDT (0456 GMT) after landing on the steppes of Kazakhstan.
Ryzhikov, Kud-Sverchkov and Rubins launched from Baikonur on 14 October. Their return to Earth on April 17 will complete a 185-day mission.
With the rotation of the Soyuz crew, SpaceX and NASA will be cleared to launch the second operational Crew Dragon mission to the space station on April 22nd.
The Crew Dragon Endeavor spacecraft, which was refurbished after being launched on a test flight with NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken last year, will arrive at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida from April 39A at 06:11 EDT (1011 GMT) explodes (1011 GMT) on April. 22.
A veteran crew will steer into space on top of a Falcon 9 launcher, powered by a reused first-phase booster, which SpaceX restored after the Crew-1 lift last November.
NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough, a 53-year-old former Army helicopter pilot, is commander of the Crew-2 mission. He is a veteran of two previous space missions, including a flight with the spacecraft Endeavor in 2008 and a long expedition to the space station in 2016 and 2017.
The Crew-2 pilot is Megan McArthur, 49, who has one spaceflight in her career. McArthur was an oceanographer before her choice as a NASA astronaut. She flies the spacecraft Atlantis on a 2009 mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. This will be her first mission to the International Space Station.
Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and French-born European astronaut Thomas Pesquet will also fly on the Crew-2 mission. Hoshide, 52, is an aerospace engineer with decades of experience in Japan’s space program. This is his third spaceflight after a mission with the spacecraft Discovery in 2008 and then in 2012 spent four months on the space station.
Pesquet is a 43-year-old former Air France pilot with one previous trip to the space station under his belt. He lived and worked at the space station in 2016 and 2017 and flew to the complex on the same Soyuz mission as Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, who will arrive at the station two weeks before the Crew-2 mission later this month.
Assuming the Crew-2 mission begins on April 22, Kimbrough and his crew will reach the space station on April 23 at 5:29 AM EDT (0929 GMT) for an automatic dock.
Their arrival begins with a five-day handover with the Crew-1 astronauts, when the space station will briefly house 11 crew members.
The Crew-1 astronauts plan to board their Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft and dock at the space station on April 28 at 05:00 EDT (0900 GMT). The Crew Dragon capsule will force its Draco propellers to target the Florida Parachute Jump the same day at 12:35 EDT (1635 GMT).
NASA and SpaceX officials held a Stage Operations Readiness Review on Monday to confirm the target dates for the launch and docking of Crew-2 and the return of the Crew-1 mission to Earth. A flight readiness review on April 15 will formally determine the launch date for the Crew-2 mission.
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