An international crew of four representing four countries is in orbit following a successful launch to the International Space Station at 3:27 a.m. EDT Saturday, Aug. 26, from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The agency’s SpaceX Crew-7 mission is the seventh commercial crew rotation mission for NASA.
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The International Space Station welcomed a new cargo craft overnight as mission managers postponed the launch of the SpaceX Crew-7 mission for 24 hours. The Expedition 69 crew members have begun unpacking the new cargo while servicing a variety of science equipment aboard the orbital lab.
Cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin went to bed Friday mid-afternoon after monitoring the Roscosmos Progress 85 resupply ship as it docked to the Zvezda service module’s aft port at 11:45 p.m. EDT on Thursday. The duo worked through leak and pressure checks, opened the Progress 85 hatch, then spent the next several hours offloading some of the nearly three tons of food, fuel, and supplies to replenish the lab residents.
As the Roscosmos resupply ship approached the station, four SpaceX Crew-7 crew members in Florida were informed their launch to join the Expedition 69 crew would wait one more day. Liftoff of the SpaceX Dragon Endurance spacecraft atop the company’s Falcon 9 rocket is now scheduled for 3:27 a.m. EDT on Saturday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Mission managers decided to use the extra day to review Dragon’s safety and life support systems.
Crew-7 Commander Jasmin Moghbeli will lead Pilot Andreas Mogensen of ESA (European Space Agency) and Mission Specialists Satoshi Furukawa of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Konstantin Borisov of Roscosmos, during their flight to the station. The Commercial Crew quartet aboard Endurance will automatically dock to the Harmony module’s space-facing port at 8:39 a.m. on Sunday. Soon after, the foursome will enter the station, greet the Expedition 69 crew, and begin a six-month microgravity research mission.
Meanwhile, the seven station crew members orbiting Earth are all but ready to welcome their four new crewmates. While the two cosmonauts were wrapping up Progress 85 activities and getting ready for bed, the other five lab residents worked on advanced research hardware and investigated ways to treat heart ailments.
NASA Flight Engineers Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg worked in the Tranquility module preparing the NanoRacks Bishop airlock for its upcoming depressurization and demating. The Canadarm2 robotic arm will grapple and remove Bishop from Tranquility early next week for an experiment to measure temperature, vibrations, and radiation on external payload sites.
UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi stowed hardware and reconfigured the Microgravity Science Glovebox following an investigation to manufacture superior material structures in space. Flight Engineer Frank Rubio of NASA worked in the Kibo laboratory module swapping samples of stem-cell derived heart micro-tissues inside the Life Science Glovebox. Rubio’s research work may help doctors discover new therapies for space-caused cardiac abnormalities and Earth-bound heart diseases.
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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Mark Garcia
The galaxy ESO 300-16 looms over this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
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An uncrewed Roscosmos Progress 85 spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station’s aft port of the Zvezda service module at 11:45 p.m. EDT. The spacecraft launched on a Soyuz rocket at 9:08 p.m. EDT Tuesday, Aug. 22 (6:08 a.m. Baikonur time on Aug. 23) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Progress is delivering almost three tons of food, fuel, and supplies to the International Space Station for the Expedition 69 crew.
The spacecraft will remain at the orbiting laboratory for approximately six months, then undock for a destructive but safe re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere to dispose of trash loaded by the crew.
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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Mark Garcia
The Expedition 69 crew will receive a space delivery late Thursday night and just a few hours before a new crew will launch to the International Space Station. While the orbital residents are getting ready for both missions there was still some time for gene therapy research and lab maintenance tasks.
Two cosmonauts, Commander Sergey Prokopyev and Flight Engineer Dmitri Petelin, will be on duty monitoring the Roscosmos Progress 85 cargo craft during its automated docking planned for 11:50 p.m. EDT. During the morning, the duo practiced on the telerobotically operated rendezvous unit, or TORU, to remotely control an arriving spacecraft in the unlikely event the vehicle was unable to automatically dock. The Progress 85 is carrying three tons of food, fuel, and supplies the cosmonaut duo will begin unpacking about two hours after its arrival. The space freighter will remain docked to the Zvezda service module’s aft port for six months of cargo activities.
About 4 hours after the resupply ship’s arrival, the SpaceX Crew-7 mission will launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to the orbital lab. Liftoff of the SpaceX Dragon Endurance spacecraft with four Commercial Crew members atop the company’s Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled for 3:50 a.m. Friday.
Endurance, commanded by NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli with Pilot Andreas Mogensen of ESA (European Space Agency) and Mission Specialists Satoshi Furukawa of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Konstantin Borisov, will automatically dock to the Harmony module’s space-facing port at 2:02 a.m. on Saturday. About two hours later the foursome will enter the station, greet the Expedition 69 crew, and begin a six-month microgravity research mission.
Flight Engineers Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, both from NASA, and Sultan Alneyadi from UAE (United Arab Emirates) prepared for Saturday’s Crew-7 arrival configuring the station for four new crew members. Bowen staged emergency equipment in the orbital lab’s U.S. segment that is standard procedure before a new crew arrives. Hoburg set up a new crew quarters in the Columbus laboratory module. Alneyadi configured computers inside the cupola that will monitor Dragon Endurance’s arrival on Saturday morning.
While the mission preparations were underway, NASA Flight Engineer Frank Rubio focused his time on biotechnology research. He treated cell samples to seek ways to closely mimic the human central nervous system and brain environment for the Neuronix investigation. Results may provide paths for researchers to discover new therapies treating neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
On Thursday, Aug. 24, the International Space Station’s Zvezda service module engines were fired for 21.5 seconds, beginning at 11 a.m. EDT to maneuver the complex away from the predicted track of an orbital debris fragment. The maneuver will not affect the rendezvous of the Roscosmos Progress 85 cargo vessel or the launch of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-7 mission.
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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Mark Garcia
