Four astronauts from four countries arrived at the Space Coast on Sunday ahead of this week’s planned launch of the SpaceX Crew-7 mission to the International Space Station.
“If ever you’ve seen the evidence of this being an international program, you’re seeing it today with this group,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, who welcomed the crew on the tarmac at the Launch and Landing Facility at KSC after arriving from Houston on a NASA Gulfstream jet. “Of all the crews, this is the most international that we’ve had and I think shows the breadth of the cooperation around the globe. So, let’s get on with the launch.”
It’s the first time a SpaceX Crew Dragon will be flying with astronauts from four different space agencies. They are set to fly in the Crew Dragon Endurance making its third trip to space and aiming for liftoff from KSC’s Launch Complex 39-A at 3:26 a.m. Friday. Backup opportunities fall on Saturday and Sunday.
The flight has just one NASA astronaut, mission commander Jasmin Moghbeli, the seventh of the 2017 class of astronaut candidates known as “The Turtles” to fly into space. It was a nickname given to them by the previous astronaut class.
She’s joined by European Space Agency astronaut and pilot Andreas Mogensen of Denmark, mission specialist JAXA astronaut Satoshi Furukawa of Japan, and mission specialist Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov of Russia.
The four crew will join Expedition 69 for about a 190-day stay on board the ISS, taking over for the quartet of Crew-6 that has been orbiting Earth since their arrival on March 3. NASA intends to send that crew home about five days after Crew-7’s arrival, aiming for a splashdown off the coast of Florida.
Only Mogensen and Furukawa have previous spaceflight experience. Mogensen spent 10 days in space with a short visit to the ISS in 2015 and will become the ISS commander for the upcoming Expedition 70.
Furukawa is the only member with a long stay on the ISS in the books. He was on board for nearly six months 12 years ago.
“I’m happy to be here,” he said. “In my previous mission on the International Space Station in 2011, I was fortunate to welcome the last space shuttle crew members of STS-135.”
He’s given the rookie American and Russian his two cents on what to expect when they get to space.
“Microgravity is special and unique, but it’s a kind of minor thing. You can catch it up with a good learning curve so no problem at all, but my small advice was that especially right after insertion [into space], just move slowly, don’t move your head abruptly,” he said with a knowing grin while his crewmates laughed in the background. “That will make you in a bad situation.”
Moghbeli said the advice she’s been given has covered everything from the small things to the big picture.
“We do simple things like we have to fold a piece of cloth and I think, ‘OK, I’m gonna fold this cloth, It’s going to take me two minutes,’” she said. “But it turns out when you don’t have gravity helping you, even simple things like that, or just how you position yourself … will take experience to learn how to do them in space and take a lot of time.”
Moghbeli’s astronaut classmates Frank Rubio and Woody Hoburg are awaiting her arrival on the station, and an eighth member will fly up in September as part of a Soyuz replacement crew. A ninth Turtle, Matthew Dominick, is slated to fly up early next year on the Crew-8 mission.
“I think most people know by this point our Turtle class, the group of astronaut candidates selected in 2017, is extremely close. … We hope to continue with the turtle takeover in space,” she said, adding she received more advice from her six classmates who have flown already. “The big things are, don’t forget to be in the moment, don’t forget to look out the window and don’t forget to just take things one step at a time. It’s an incredible experience but also a lot of hard work.”
This marks the seventh operational mission for SpaceX under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program and the 11th flight of Crew Dragon with humans on board. This trip will bring its total passengers it has taken to space to 42, including the two-person crew of the original Demo-2 mission in 2020, the pair of private Axiom Space missions to the ISS and orbital Inspiration4 flight with billionaire Jared Issacman.
The crew is expected to arrive about 23 hours after launch docking at 2:45 a.m. Saturday parking next to Crew-6’s Crew Dragon Endeavour.
Moghbeli said she’s humbled to be part of a crew representing so many parts of the planet.
“If you look at our four patches, you’ll see a different nation’s flag on each one,” she said. “We hope this represents what we can accomplish when we work together in unity and cooperate together. And we think this really is what the International Space Station is all about.”
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