ISS - Expedition 64 Mission patch.
Apr 6, 2021
Image above: Northrop Grumman's Cygnus resupply ship, with its prominent cymbal-shaped UltraFlex solar arrays is pictured attached to the space station. Image Credit: NASA.
The first of two crews launching to the International Space Station in April will blast off from Kazakhstan on Friday. The Soyuz MS-18 rocket rolled out to its launch pad this morning as three new Expedition 65 crew members get ready for their long-term space research mission.
NASA Flight Engineer Mark Vande Hei and Roscosmos Flight Engineer Pyotr Dubrov will flank Soyuz Commander Oleg Novitskiy inside the new Soyuz crew ship. They will lift off Friday at 3:42 a.m. EDT from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and take a near three-and-a-half hour ride to the station, orbiting Earth twice.
Image above: The Soyuz MS-18 rocket, that will launch the Expedition 65 crew to the space station on April 9, is rolled out to the launch pad in Kazakhstan. Image Credits: NASA/Bill Ingalls.
After the new crew docks to the Rassvet module and opens the hatches, there will be 10 people occupying the orbiting lab until the crew they are replacing, the Expedition 64 trio, returns to Earth a week later. NASA astronaut Kate Rubins will complete her mission on April 16 with Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Ryzhikov. They will undock from the station’s Poisk module inside the Soyuz MS-17 crew ship completing a 185-day mission and parachute to a landing in Kazakhstan.
Onboard the station, the current seven-member crew is busy conducting advanced space science benefitting humans on and off the Earth. The orbital septet is also gearing up to accommodate the two April crew swaps when there will be as many as eleven people occupying the space station.
Image above: The Soyuz rocket is rolled out by train to the launch pad at Site 31, Tuesday, April 6, 2021, at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Expedition 65 NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei, Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Oleg Novitskiy are scheduled to launch aboard their Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft on April 9. Image Credits: NASA/Bill Ingalls.
NASA Flight Engineers Michael Hopkins and Victor Glover were back inside Europe’s Columbus laboratory module exploring how microgravity affects the human nervous system. Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi worked on biology hardware servicing components inside the Cell Biology Experiment Facility and the Confocal Space Microscope.
Soyuz-2.1a ready to launch Soyuz MS-18 “Y. A. Gagarin”
Noguchi also joined Rubins during the afternoon and set up extra sleep accommodations inside the Columbus lab. NASA Flight Engineer Shannon Walker routed cables that charge U.S. spacesuit batteries inside the Quest airlock.
Related links:
Expedition 64: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition64/index.html
Expedition 65: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition65/index.html
Rassvet module: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/rassvet
Poisk module: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/poisk-mini-research-module-2
Advanced space science: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html
Columbus laboratory module: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/europe-columbus-laboratory
Cell Biology Experiment Facility: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Facility.html?#id=333
Confocal Space Microscope: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Facility.html?#id=7428
Quest airlock: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/joint-quest-airlock
Space Station Research and Technology: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/overview.html
International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html
Images (mentioned), Video, Text, Credits: NASA/Mark Garcia/Yvette Smith/ROSCOSMOS/SciNews.
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