Substitute area station crew takes off on eight-month mission

With NASA’s delayed Artemis II moon mission on maintain, SpaceX pressed forward with a Friday the thirteenth launch of 4 recent crew members to the Worldwide Area Station in a mission to exchange 4 fliers who got here residence early final month due to a medical problem one was having.

Crew 12 commander Jessica Meir, pilot Jack Hathaway, European Area Company astronaut Sophie Adenot and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, strapped right into a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket, blasted off from pad 40 on the Cape Canaveral Area Power Station at 5:15 a.m. EST.

Lighting up the pre-dawn sky, the Falcon 9 streaked away on a northeasterly trajectory aligned with the area station’s orbit, heading in the right direction for docking Saturday round 3:15 p.m. to spice up the lab’s crew from three again to a full complement of seven.

“It seems Friday the thirteenth is a really fortunate day,” SpaceX Launch Management radioed as soon as the crew reached orbit.

“That was fairly a trip,” Meir responded. 

Crew 12 initially anticipated to take off after 4 different astronauts ventured to the moon and again in NASA’s Artemis II mission. However the moonshot was delayed to early March due to hydrogen gas leaks in that crew’s large Area Launch System rocket. That, in flip, cleared the best way for NASA to maneuver up Crew 12’s launch to Feb. 11.

However excessive winds off shore within the Atlantic Ocean, the place the Crew 12 fliers must splash down in an ascent emergency, then prompted NASA to face down till Friday, when calmer seas and decrease winds had been predicted.

Whereas Crew 12 made ultimate preparations to fly, engineers ran one other check at close by pad 39B Thursday to examine the effectiveness of recent seals in an umbilical connecting gas strains to the SLS moon rocket. The seals are supposed to forestall the kind of hydrogen leakage seen throughout a “wet-dress rehearsal” countdown Feb. 2.

NASA didn’t publicize the check, however the company stated later it didn’t go as deliberate due to what sources described as a frozen filter in floor gear.

The difficulty should be addressed earlier than engineers can try a re-test of the brand new seals, adopted by one other full-up costume rehearsal fueling check to clear the best way for launch as early as March 3.

Substitute crew units sights on area station, boosting workers again to seven

Within the near-term, Crew 12 has its sights set on becoming a member of area station commander Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, fellow cosmonaut Sergey Mikaev and NASA astronaut Chris Williams, who had been launched to the lab final November aboard a Russian Soyuz ferry ship. They may assist the brand new crew stand up to hurry on the intricacies of station operations.

Meir and Fedyaev will not want a lot assist as a result of each are station veterans. Their crewmates are making their first journey to orbit, however Hathaway and Adenot deliver all kinds of operational expertise to the desk.

Hathaway is a veteran F/A-18E fighter pilot with greater than 500 plane provider landings to his credit score whereas Adenot is a French air drive helicopter check pilot with greater than 3,000 hours flying time underneath her belt. She’s additionally an skilled sky and SCUBA diver and a licensed yoga teacher.

Meir holds a Ph.D. in marine biology and took part in three all-female spacewalks throughout her first station keep in 2019-20. She and Fedyaev are trying ahead to serving to their rookie crewmates rapidly stand up to hurry once they get to the ISS.

“Each of us are actually excited to deliver our previous experiences and experience to the very first flight for (Hathaway and Adenot),” she stated. “We love this type of stability that we’ve got, of two veterans and two rookies, to hit the bottom operating after we get aboard the Worldwide Area Station.”

Fedyaev, who flew to the area station aboard a Crew Dragon in 2023, was added to Crew 12 in December after veteran cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev was eliminated. reportedly for violating safety restrictions throughout coaching at SpaceX’s Hawthorne, Calif., headquarters. Roscosmos, the Russian area company, stated solely that Artemyev was reassigned to different work.

Fedyaev’s prior expertise and coaching with SpaceX and NASA enabled him to affix Crew 12 with little influence on launch preparations.

Early return of 1 station crew prompts accelerated launch of replacements    

Crew 12 is changing Crew 11 commander Zena Cardman, co-pilot Mike Fincke, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui and cosmonaut Oleg Platonov. Crew 11 initially was anticipated to return to Earth round Feb. 20, after a “handover” with their Crew 12 replacements.

However NASA ordered Cardman and firm again to Earth on Jan. 15 after one of many Crew 11 fliers skilled an undisclosed medical problem. Crew 11 got here down safely and all 4 crew members appeared wholesome and in good spirits at a post-flight information convention.

However their departure left the station with a single NASA astronaut aboard — Williams — to function methods within the U.S. section of the complicated. It additionally introduced NASA analysis to a digital standstill.

“What it means is, actually, there’s simply fewer palms on board to do a few of the work,” stated area station Program Supervisor Dina Contella.

“On the U.S. working section, if we had been to have a serious failure, then we want to have a second USOS crew member to have the ability to exit and carry out a fancy spacewalk.”

At current, she stated, there are not any main issues aboard the area station. Even so, NASA requested SpaceX to maneuver the Crew 12 launch up by just a few days to get the station crew again to full power as quickly as doable.

Earlier than the Artemis II launch was delayed, NASA was planning a ship-to-ship name between the moon-bound astronauts and the area station crew. That ought to nonetheless be doable regardless of the moon mission delay.

Crew members face busy schedule in orbit    

Meir definitely hopes so, as a result of her accomplice throughout these all-female spacewalks was Artemis II crew member Christina Koch. And her astronaut class included Artemis II pilot Victor Glover, and she or he stated she’s shut buddies with commander Reid Wiseman and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

“I’d be actually excited to have the ability to speak to Christina, and likewise my classmate Victor Glover and type of my astronaut uncles, Reid Wiseman and Jeremy Hansen,” she stated earlier than the moon mission slipped to March. “We’re all very excited to be all in area on the identical time.”

However principally, Meir is trying ahead to the science her crew will conduct throughout a roughly eight-month keep aboard the area station.

“We are going to do experiments starting from bone and muscle well being, (learning) our blood stream, what is going on on in all of those methods throughout the modifications that we expertise in microgravity,” she stated.

“There’s an experiment that is trying on the small muscle tissue in our necks and the way they’ll assist us in numerous gravitational phases. There can be photographs of our brains taken pre- and post-flight to have a look at any modifications to the mind that occurred throughout microgravity and area missions.”

The astronauts will proceed ongoing research of how microgravity impacts the imaginative and prescient of some long-duration fliers, apparently by altering the form of the attention over time. Apparently, these modifications will not be all the time for the worst.

Meir stated she wanted glasses earlier than her first flight, however her imaginative and prescient improved to 20-15 over the course of her keep in area.

“Fairly attention-grabbing for me, it truly turned out to be fairly advantageous,” she stated. “However in fact, we’re learning this actually completely, as a result of we need to ensure that we have no long-term injury to astronauts’ imaginative and prescient, or to the eyes themselves.

“The great factor is, we’ve not seen any deficits long-term that exist past the missions, however we have to gather extra knowledge.”

The crew can even check a brand new train machine developed by the European Area Company that is designed to assist astronauts keep match throughout future flights to the moon and Mars. And they’re going to work with touchdown simulator software program to study extra about how microgravity may have an effect on astronauts setting down on the moon or Mars.

“We also have a new experiment known as Loosen up Professional that Sophie and I can be collaborating in that is meditation and mindfulness and the way that may profit astronauts on area missions,” Meir stated.

However it will not be all work. Meir is bringing a piccolo along with her and Fedyaev plans to play a harmonica he introduced aboard on his first flight.

Together with the harmonica, “there have been three guitars throughout our earlier mission on board, Fedyaev stated. “We used to sing collectively, and it was like karaoke.

“We sang totally different languages, or I’d play the guitar, and everyone would sing the phrases from the track they seemed up on-line. So we are going to most likely meet and play our musical devices and possibly truly give a live performance!”

Adenot would be the second French girl to fly in area. Doctor Claudie Haigneré, considered one of seven French astronauts chosen in 1985, spent 16 days aboard the Russian Mir area station in 1996. Adenot stated Haigneré has acted as a kind of mentor for her and deliberate to attend the Crew 12 launch.

“I bear in mind very nicely the primary launch of Claudie Haigneré,” Adenot stated. “I used to be 14 years outdated, and that day it type of clicked in my thoughts. She was the primary French girl astronaut flying to area and earlier than, solely males.

“And , if you’re a young person, you are simply on the lookout for inspiration, and if somebody has completed it already, then it clicks in your thoughts: say, if a lady has completed it already, then why not me?”

Meir additionally dreamed of spaceflight when she was a baby and stated she will’t wait to get again aboard the area station.

“Once I flew final time, I didn’t have a husband and a baby, and now I’ve each,” she stated. “On the finish of my seven months, final time, I truly wished to remain longer, I wasn’t prepared to come back residence. And this time, maybe will really feel a bit of bit totally different since I will be leaving my three-year-old again right here.

“However every little thing that we’re doing on board the area station is so thrilling, it retains us going, retains us invigorated, and it is easy to not miss issues again at residence.

“I hope that what we’re doing can be thrilling sufficient and vital sufficient, noteworthy sufficient, that someday when she’s sufficiently old, she’ll admire that point away.”