Four astronauts from different countries and space agencies went into space on a SpaceX rocket. They are heading to the International Space Station for a mission that will last more than six months.
The team is traveling inside the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endurance spaceship on a mission called Crew-7. The spaceship was sent into space using a rocket called SpaceX Falcon 9. It was launched from NASA‘s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 3:27 a. mOn Saturday, at ET time.
The space mission has four astronauts. The mission commander is Jasmin Moghbeli from NASA. Andreas Mogensen is from the European Space Agency. Satoshi Furukawa is from JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Konstantin Borisov is a Russian cosmonaut representing Roscosmos.
After the Crew Dragon capsule was in space, it separated from the Falcon 9 rocket and started to travel on its own in space. The spacecraft will spend more than 24 hours moving carefully towards the space station, which is circling about 220 nautical miles (420 kilometers) above the surface of the Earth.
Moghbeli told SpaceX mission control that space travel is hard, but they make it seem easy.
“We’re a group that works together towards the same goal,” she said. Cheer for Crew-7. Fun ride
The crew will arrive at the space station at approximately 8:39 in the morning. On Sunday at 8 PM.
After getting on the spaceship, Moghbeli, Mogensen, Furukawa, and Borisov will meet the seven astronauts who are already in space.
The Crew-7 astronauts will be taking charge from the SpaceX Crew-6 astronauts, who have been on the space station for a few months. They will spend approximately five days in this transition.
This mission is the eighth time NASA and SpaceX are working together to take astronauts to the space station. This program has been going on since SpaceX’s first mission with crew in 2020.
The Crew-7 astronauts are the most diverse group of SpaceX crew members so far.
“We are very proud and I personally feel honored to be part of this amazing team. When you look at our four patches, you’ll see a different country’s flag on each one,” Moghbeli said during a news conference after the crew arrived in Florida on Sunday. The leader of the mission was talking about the flag patches on the left shoulder of the astronauts’ suits. We believe this shows what we can achieve when we collaborate and work together as a team. And we believe that this is the true purpose of the International Space Station.
The team also collaborated to create its official mission patch. It shows a picture of a dragon sitting on top of the Earth.
“We wanted the design to show that everything we do on this mission is aimed at helping our planet and the people on it,” Moghbeli explained. She said that the red, white, and blue stripes on the dragon’s tail symbolize the colors of the flags of the four countries participating in the Crew-7 mission.
During their time on the space station, which is predicted to be around 190 days, the Crew-7 astronauts will carefully go through a list of experiments. The study will look into the possibility of bacteria and fungi spread from space missions involving humans. The team will check if it is possible to remove the tiny living things from the vents in the space station and release them into space where there is no air.
The ESA has another project that will study how sleeping in space is different from sleeping on Earth. They will analyze the brain waves of astronauts while they fall asleep. Another test will examine how biofilms form in wastewater on the space station. This could help us find improved methods for recycling water for drinking and hygiene while in space. Yes, the space travelers on the station have been using reused sweat and urine to drink and clean themselves for a long time.
Commander Moghbeli was born in Germany, near Frankfurt. Her parents are from Iran. However, she considers Baldwin, New York, on Long Island as her hometown.
She completed high school and then went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study aerospace engineering. After that, she earned a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.
Moghbeli has experience in the military, where she worked as a pilot for the Marine Corps. She completed over 150 missions in combat and flew for a total of 2,000 hours.
In 2017, she was chosen to join NASA’s group of astronauts. The Crew-7 mission is her first time going into space.
Moghbeli said during a news conference on July 25 that she had always wanted to do this for a very long time. I am really thrilled to be able to see our amazing planet again. Everyone I have spoken to who has flown before has said that it gave them a different and transformative way of looking at things.
Borisov became the third astronaut from Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, to travel in a spacecraft made in the United States. This happened because NASA and Roscosmos made an agreement to swap seats in 2022.
Sharing rides to the space station has been a tradition for NASA and Roscosmos. After NASA stopped their space shuttle program in 2011, Roscosmos was the only transportation provider for a long time. This new partnership between rideshare companies was a big concern for NASA last year because there were growing problems between the United States and Russia due to the war in Ukraine.
NASA has consistently stated that conflicts on Earth have not impacted the ongoing teamwork between countries in space.
Borisov, just like Moghbeli, is going on his first trip to space.
I’m really, really happy and thrilled. “I feel very proud to be a member of the international team,” he said on Sunday. Experienced astronauts and cosmonauts say that when you go to the ISS and look at the planet, you can see that there are no boundaries. And honestly, I want to express that strong sensation and intense sentiment.
Currently, only SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Russia’s Soyuz can transport astronauts to and from the space station. However, NASA plans to have another company that can do this soon. Boeing’s Starliner is going to start operating soon, like SpaceX, with the help of NASA’s commercial crew program. It was delayed for many years.
Mogensen is the pilot of the Crew-7 mission. He is from Copenhagen and attended Copenhagen International School for his bachelor’s degree. Later, he studied aeronautical engineering at Imperial College London in the United Kingdom and got his master’s degree. He also got a doctorate in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.
Before he got chosen to be trained as an astronaut by ESA in 2009, he worked as a researcher at the Surrey Space Centre in the UK. His work involved studying how spacecraft can navigate and be controlled when landing on the moon.
This is his second trip to space. He went to the space station before on a 10-day Russian Soyuz mission in 2015.
Mogensen said at a news conference on Sunday that it is difficult to explain how amazing the International Space Station is. I didn’t understand it until we were about to dock on my first space mission. Then, when I looked out the windows, I saw huge solar panels floating in space beside me.
“I came to understand how amazing and one-of-a-kind the laboratory that we, as humans, have created in space close to Earth is, in the last 20 to 25 years. ”
Furukawa is one of the few astronauts in the Crew-7 team who has been to space before. He was born in Kanagawa, Japan, which is not too far from Tokyo. He went to school to become a doctor and studied a lot to learn about medicine. After that, he worked in a hospital as a surgeon.
In 1999, he was chosen to be a JAXA astronaut. In 2011, he went on his first mission to the space station, where he stayed for 165 days. He got there by going on NASA’s last space shuttle mission, STS-135.
Furukawa said he is excited about living in the space station’s zero gravity and doing scientific studies. He wants to research things that could help make new medicine and learn how humans can explore the moon in the future.
After arriving at the space station, the Crew-7 astronauts will say goodbye to the SpaceX Crew-6 astronauts. The Crew-6 astronauts will go back home on their spacecraft, called Crew Dragon Endeavour, in the next few days.
In the middle of September, the team on the space station will welcome three new members. One is an astronaut from NASA named Loral O’Hara, and the other two are cosmonauts named Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub. They will all be traveling to the space station in a Russian capsule called Soyuz MS-24.