Expedition 70 Awaits New Crew Before Next Quartet Departs
The seven-member Expedition 70 crew is awaiting the arrival of four new crewmates who are orbiting Earth today and on their way to the International Space Station. The orbiting lab residents will welcome their new crewmates early Tuesday.
The SpaceX Crew-8 mission lifted off aboard the Dragon "Endeavour" spacecraft at 10:53 p.m. EST on Sunday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Commercial Crew quartet, led by Commander Matthew Dominick with Pilot Mike Barratt and Mission Specialists Jeanette Epps and Alexander Grebenkin, is taking a 28-hour automated ride aboard Endeavour and will dock to the Harmony module?s forward port at 3 a.m. on Tuesday.
Less than two hours later, the Dragon and station hatches will open and the Crew-8 members will fly into Harmony where they will be greeted by the four astronauts and three cosmonauts representing Expedition 70. Crew-8 will officially become station flight engineers about 45 minutes later, participating in welcome remarks from family members and mission officials back on Earth. They will stay onboard the orbital outpost for a six-month space research mission.
The station crew will remain at 11 crew members for a few days before another quartet ends its mission after six-and-a-half months. NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli will command the Dragon Endurance spacecraft bringing home Andreas Mogensen from ESA (European Space Agency), Satoshi Furukawa from JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), and Konstantin Borisov from Roscosmos. The Crew-7 members launched on Aug. 26, 2023, and docked to Harmony?s space-facing port the next day.
During their stay on the space station, the homebound foursome explored a wide variety of space phenomena to benefit humans living on and off the Earth. The crew researched advanced science topics including how microgravity affects the human immune system, the aging process and its effect on disease mechanisms, more effective space exercise techniques, and ways to ensure clean water on long term space missions among other beneficial research.
The station?s other three crewmates, NASA astronaut Loral O?Hara and cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub, have been aboard the station since Sept. 15, when they docked to the Rassvet module inside the Soyuz MS-24 crew ship. O?Hara is due to return to Earth in April while Kononenko and Chub will stay in space for a few more months.
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