NASA Administrator Bill Nelson will give the 2022 State of NASA address at 2 p.m. EDT on Monday, March 28, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
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NASA, Axiom Space, and SpaceX managers are gathered at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX, where they have started the Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1) Flight Readiness Review (FRR). The purpose of the review is for the agency to assess the readiness of the International Space Station to execute the Ax-1 mission, including arrival, docking, in-orbit operations, undocking, and NASA cargo recovery for the private mission to and from the orbital complex.
NASA will hold a media teleconference later today, about one hour after the FRR concludes, to discuss the outcome. The current target to host the teleconference is 6 p.m. EDT. While the teleconference will not be televised, media may call in to ask questions via phone. For the call-in details, please contact NASA’s Johnson Space Center newsroom at 281-483-5111 or jsccommu@mail.nasa.gov no later than noon Friday, March 25.
Participants include:
Ax-1 launch is targeted for no earlier than Sunday, April 3, from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, pending range availability. The crew will travel in a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and launch on the company’s Falcon 9 rocket.
The Ax-1 crew members are Commander Michael López-Alegría of Spain and the United States, Pilot Larry Connor of the United States, and Mission Specialists Eytan Stibbe of Israel, and Mark Pathy of Canada.
During the 10-day mission, the crew will spend eight days on the International Space Station conducting scientific research, outreach, and commercial activities.
For more information about NASA’s low-Earth orbit commercialization activities, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/leo-economy/
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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Mark Garcia
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Wally Funk delivers remarks after accepting the 2022 Michael Collins Trophy for Lifetime Achievement.
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The Expedition 66 crew is turning its attention to the departure of three crew members late next week following the completion of a pair of spacewalks. The International Space Station is also gearing up to welcome the first private astronaut mission aboard a SpaceX Dragon vehicle in early April.
Two astronauts had medical checkups and a light duty day today following Wednesday’s spacewalk to install thermal gear and electronics components on the orbiting lab. Flight Engineers Raja Chari and Matthias Maurer spent a few moments Thursday morning getting blood pressure, temperature, and heart rate and breathing checks. The duo spent six hours and 54 minutes on Wednesday working outside the orbital lab readying it for a third roll-out solar array and connecting cables to the Bartolomeo science platform on the Columbus laboratory module. They were joined Thursday afternoon by NASA astronauts Kayla Barron and Tom Marshburn for a conference with spacewalk specialists on the ground.
The four astronauts also called down to mission controllers and discussed the upcoming private astronaut mission from Axiom currently targeted for launch no earlier than April 3. NASA, SpaceX, and Axiom mission managers will hold a media teleconference one hour after NASA’s Flight Readiness Review, or approximately Friday at 6 p.m. EDT following their flight readiness review. Former NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria will command the Axiom-1 mission with Pilot Larry Connor and Mission Specialists Eytan Stibbe and Mark Pathy aboard the SpaceX Dragon Endeavour vehicle.
In the meantime, NASA Flight Engineer Mark Vande Hei is nearing his return to Earth with cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov on March 30. The trio will enter the Soyuz MS-19 crew ship, undock from the Rassvet module, and parachute to landing in Kazakhstan. Vande Hei will land with a NASA-record breaking 355 days in space surpassing former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly’s single spaceflight record of 340 days.
Shkaplerov continued packing the Soyuz MS-19 crew ship while Dubrov helped the station’s three newest crew members get familiar with space station systems. Veteran cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev with first time space-flyers Sergey Korsakov and Denis Matveev are in the first week of six-and-a-half month mission that began on March 18 when they arrived aboard the Soyuz MS-21 crew ship.
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/
Get the latest from NASA delivered every week. Subscribe here: www.nasa.gov/subscribe
Mark Garcia
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NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and two Roscosmos cosmonauts are scheduled to end their mission aboard the International Space Station and return to Earth on Wednesday, March 30.
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