Exploration 68 Officially Begins on Space Station– SpaceX Crew Swap Planned

The seven-member Expedition 68 team postures for a main picture. From left are, NASA astronaut Frank Rubio; Roscosmos cosmonaut Dmitri Petelin; Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Koichi Wakata; NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann; and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Anna Kikina. Credit: NASA The Expedition 68 objective is formally in progress aboard the International Space Station (ISS) with 7 astronauts and cosmonauts living and collaborating. The team swaps aren’t ended up yet as 4 SpaceX Crew-5 members count down to their upcoming launch to the orbiting lab. Leader Samantha Cristoforetti of ESA (European Space Agency) will lead station operations for about the next 2 weeks, till she and fellow crewmates Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines, and Jessica Watkins go back to Earth aboard the SpaceX Dragon Freedom team ship. The foursome has actually been aboard the spaceport station given that April27 They invested the day on Friday examining their Dragon pressure matches, loading individual products, and evaluating departure and landing treatments. Exploration 67 Flight Engineers (from left) Jessica Watkins, Bob Hines, and Frank Rubio, all 3 NASA astronauts, posture for a picture together inside the cupola, the International Space Station’s “window to the world.” Credit: NASA The homebound business team is awaiting their SpaceX Crew-5 replacements. They are presently targeting a launch to the orbiting laboratory no earlier than twelve noon EDT on Wednesday, October 5. SpaceX Crew-5 Commander Nicole Mann and Pilot Josh Cassada, both from NASA, with Mission Specialists Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Anna Kikina of Roscosmos, are because of reach the station one day after introducing aboard the Dragon Endurance. They will invest a couple of days getting utilized to life on orbit prior to Cristoforetti and her 3 Freedom crewmates end their objective, undock, and parachute to Earth inside the Freedom team ship. In the meantime, novice space-flyer Frank Rubio of NASA remains in his 2nd week as a flight engineer onboard the orbiting laboratory. He came to the spaceport station with fellow flight engineers Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitriy Petelin, both cosmonauts from Roscosmos, on September 21 inside the Soyuz MS-22 team ship. Rubio invested completion of the week dealing with the Intelligent Glass Optics research study, checking out how to utilize expert system to adjust products producing, such as optical fiber, to the vacuum of area for. He switched and observed glass fiber samples being pulled inside the Microgravity Science Glovebox. Petelin and Prokopyev and Petelin partnered together for a research study checking out how microgravity impacts the heart and capillary.
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