Within the new Crew Dragon capsule “Freedom”, four astronauts took off on April 27 for the International Space Station (ISS). This mission will be of long duration, until September, for the three Americans and the Italian who have just taken off. As usual, a busy program awaits them!
And, extremely rare, there are currently two Europeans in orbit!
Approaching… already!
It’s the fastest transfer between the takeoff of a Crew Dragon capsule and its arrival to dock with the International Space Station: just 16 hours! Of course, it’s a lot longer than Soyuz and its 3 to 6 hour journey, but it gives astronauts a short day to get used to weightlessness and be efficient once on the ISS.
The brand new Crew Dragon “Freedom” capsule took off on April 27 at 9:52 a.m. from the Kennedy Space Center. The mission was delayed because it needed space on the ISS… And for that, another Crew Dragon capsule (that of the Axiom-1 tourist mission) had to come down to Earth. It took almost a week for the weather to allow this return, with the landing on April 25 at 5 p.m. Less than two days between an arrival and a departure, the SpaceX teams were therefore widely requested, but they did not fail.
Make way for the pros
No tourists in the Crew-4 mission, they are all professional astronauts. Two of them, pilot Robert (Bob) Hines and geologist Jessica Watkins, are new to orbit. Selected in 2017 in the so-called “Turtles” promotion, they form the new generation that NASA wishes to promote and which must acquire experience before the Artemis missions. Astronaut and moon walker Harrison Schmitt was also present at take-off to recall the importance of these six-month scientific missions, which will also (according to the agency) prepare for the future.
The commander of the Crew Dragon capsule is astronaut Kjell Lindgren, who has already carried out a first long mission within the ISS (but coming to Soyuz) in 2015. Finally, the one who completes the crew is none other as the Italian Samantha Cristoforetti, ESA’s only active female astronaut. Also experienced, with almost 200 days of orbit on the clock, she took off the day after her 45th birthday for her mission that ESA calls Minerva.
Crew-4 should last about 4 months until the end of September, a slightly shorter rotation than the previous ones, but this will depend on the difficult mission schedule established by NASA, Roscosmos, ESA and the other partners of the ISS. The Crew-3 crew should serve as their relay for the most important experiments and everything you need to know until May 4, the date for the moment scheduled for their departure. Thus, until then, there will be (and this is extremely rare) two Europeans from ESA in orbit at the same time!
A busy schedule
The Crew-4 mission will be varied and intense. In addition to freighter arrivals and departures, the visit, if all goes well, of the Boeing Starliner capsule next month and several outings to install the new solar panels as well as the European robotic arm (Russian side), scientific experiments and techniques will be numerous.
There will be, for example, experiments with a process for creating an artificial retina, the test of a new wireless suit to observe the constants of astronauts, new robotic tests with Astrobee cubes, experiments to observe the growth of roots in weightlessness as well as a new on-board medical unit to test, isolate and confirm the presence of microbes and bacteria.
On the same subject :
Despite the context, operations on the ISS continue (almost) as planned
Source :University of Arizona
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