Four Expedition 72 crewmates are getting used to life aboard the International Space Station following their arrival on Saturday and the departure of the SpaceX Crew-9 mission on Tuesday. Meanwhile, a U.S. cargo craft is poised to be released from the orbital outpost ending a seven-and-a-half-month stay.
New NASA Flight Engineers Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers began Wednesday unpacking cargo stowed inside the SpaceX Dragon Endurance spacecraft. Afterward, the duo transferred standard emergency hardware from the station into Dragon and reconfigured the spacecraft for docked operations. After a midday meal McClain and Ayers spent the rest of the day getting used to life on orbit and familiarizing themselves with space station systems.
Their SpaceX Crew-10 crewmates, Takuya Onishi of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration agency) and Kirill Peskov of Roscosmos also participated in Dragon cargo transfers and station orientation activities. Onishi helped unpack Dragon, reviewed upcoming science operations, then worked out on the advanced resistive exercise device. Kirill tested computers that receive video from the European robotic arm, worked on life support systems, then got up to speed with life in microgravity.
The new Crew-10 quartet replaces the Crew-9 mission which undocked from the Harmony module early Tuesday in the Dragon spacecraft and splashed down off the coast of Florida near Tallahassee on the same day. NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 commander Nick Hague returned to Earth with NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. Hague and Gorbunov completed a 171-day mission that began on Sept. 28, 2024. Williams and Wilmore wrapped up 286 days in space following their mission that began on June 5, 2024.
One more spacecraft is due to depart the International Space Station this week as the Cygnus space freighter nears the end of its cargo mission that began on Aug. 4, 2024. The uncrewed, trash-filled Cygnus is due to be removed by the Canadarm2 robotic arm from the Unity module’s Earth-facing port then released into Earth orbit at 7:55 a.m. EDT on Friday. Cygnus will reenter Earth’s atmosphere above the South Pacific Ocean two days later for a fiery, but safe demise.
The station’s other three residents have been orbiting Earth since Sept. 11, 2024, when they launched from Kazakhstan and docked to the Rassvet module aboard the Soyuz MS-26 crew ship. Now, NASA Flight Engineer Don Pettit and Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner are approaching the end of their mission scheduled for April 19. When they undock from the station in their Soyuz spacecraft Expedition 73 will officially begin.
First up will be the arrival of the Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft due to launch on April 8 carrying NASA astronaut Jonny Kim and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky. Kim and Zubritsky will be beginning their first space mission while Ryzhikov will be serving on his third expedition to the orbiting lab.
Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on X, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.
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