Jasmin Moghbeli , Andreas Mogensen, Satoshi Furukawa, and Konstantin Borisov
NASA and SpaceX’s Dragon spaceship launched four astronauts to the International Space Station on Saturday. The Dragon spacecraft, propelled by a Falcon 9 rocket, lifted off at 3:27 am (0727 GMT) from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, in front of an estimated 10,000 spectators.
The Crew-7 expedition is led by American Jasmin Moghbeli and includes Danish Andreas Mogensen, Japanese Satoshi Furukawa, and Russian Konstantin Borisov.
NASA tweeted, “We have liftoff! Endurance ascends to space. Next stop for #Crew7: the @Space_Station”, through its official ‘X’ handle.
We have liftoff! Endurance ascends to space. Next stop for #Crew7: the @Space_Station. pic.twitter.com/UW5Db3HH7C
— NASA (@NASA) August 26, 2023
Soon after the Dragan vehicle separated from the Falcon 9 rocket with the crew in orbit, cheers could be heard in the mission control room.
“We may have four crew members on board from four different nations… but we’re a united team with a common mission”, Moghbeli explained after the separation.
NASA announced in a blog post that the launch was moved back to Saturday to give engineers more time to study a component of the Crew Dragon capsule’s environmental control and life support system.
It is Moghbeli and Borisov’s first space voyage. Borisov will become the third Russian to ride on a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket.
“This is something I’ve wanted to do for as long as I can remember”, Moghbeli, a Naval test pilot, said last month during a media call.
“One of the things I’m most excited about is looking back at our beautiful planet”, the 40-year-old American continued.
“Everyone who I’ve talked to who has flown already has said that was a life-changing perspective — and also floating around in space, it seems really fun”, Moghbeli added.
Crew-7 will be SpaceX’s seventh normal flight to the orbital platform, with the first scheduled in 2020.
NASA pays SpaceX for the taxi service as part of a commercial crew program established to lessen reliance on Russian rockets for astronaut transport following the retirement of the space shuttle program in 2011.
Boeing is the other committed private partner, but its program is also plagued with delays and technical challenges. It has yet to fly a crew.
Despite Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, space remains a rare area of collaboration between the United States and Russia, with Americans continuing to ride aboard Russian Soyuz rockets launched from Kazakhstan.
The crew will spend six months aboard the ISS conducting science studies such as collecting samples during a spacewalk to assess whether the station’s life-support system vents release microbes.
The goal is to learn whether microbes can live and reproduce in space. Another experiment will look at the physiological differences between sleeping on Earth and sleeping in space.
“I’m looking forward to coping with all the tasks. This is a very interesting profession: you are preparing for something that you haven’t tried yet, and you really want to do it well”, Borisov stated.
Crew-7 will join the seven people already on board the ISS before Crew-6 members return to Earth a few days later.
The first segment of the ISS was launched in 1998, and it has been continually occupied by a multinational crew since 2001. Its operations are expected to last until at least 2030 when it will be decommissioned and sunk into the ocean. To replace it, several private companies are developing commercial space stations.
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