ISS - Expedition 60 Mission patch.
July 22, 2019
SpaceX is targeting Wednesday at 6:24 p.m. EDT for the launch of its 18th contracted Dragon resupply mission to the International Space Station. This will be the third flight of this particular reusable Dragon space freighter atop a Falcon 9 rocket.
The Expedition 60 crew is now fully staffed with three new flight engineers, who arrived Saturday aboard the Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft, expanding the station inhabitants to six. Drew Morgan of NASA, Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency and Alexander Skvortsov of Roscosmos are getting used to their new home in space and working to get the orbiting lab up to full speed.
Image above: A waning gibbous Moon was pictured from the International Space Station on the 50th anniversary of NASA landing humans on the lunar surface for the first time. Image Credit: NASA.
Morgan will be on Dragon duty Friday morning, monitoring its approach to the station. NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Christina Koch will capture the commercial cargo craft around 7 a.m. with the Canadarm2 robotic arm. Dragon is delivering a variety of research gear supporting human health and the International Docking Adapter-3 (IDA-3) for commercial vehicles from Boeing and SpaceX.
International Space Station (ISS). Image Credit: NASA
Station managers are planning a spacewalk to complete the installation of the IDA-3 on the space-facing side of the Harmony module. Parmitano, Hague and Koch teamed up Monday to service U.S. spacesuits ahead of the upcoming spacewalk.
Related links:
Expedition 60: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition60/index.html
SpaceX: https://www.nasa.gov/spacex
Canadarm2: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/mobile-servicing-system.html
Docking Adapter-3 (IDA-3): https://www.nasa.gov/feature/meet-the-international-docking-adapter
Harmony module: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/harmony
Zvezda service module: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/zvezda-service-module.html
Space Station Research and Technology: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html
International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html
Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Mark Garcia.
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