Crew 3 is part of NASA’s billion-dollar partnership with SpaceX.
Washington:
NASA is once again sending three astronauts, including three first-timers, to the International Space Station on Sunday in collaboration with SpaceX.
The crew of the mission “Crew-3” will spend six months on the orbital outpost, conducting research in areas including physics, health and botany, to help benefit future deep space exploration and life on Earth.
A Crew Dragon spacecraft named “Endurance”, along with Americans Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, and Kayla Barron, as well as German Mathias Maurer of the European Space Agency (ESA) fixed atop a Falcon 9 rocket at 2:21 a.m. (0621 GMT) Will launch on ) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
U.S. Air Force Colonel Chari said, “Last night we had to go to the hangar to see the endurance as they got to roll it onto the pad, and actually put their hands on the dragon, which was a lot. It’s a special experience.” The man who commanded the mission said in a press conference on Wednesday.
Of the four, only Marshburn has gone to space before. The doctor flew aboard a spacecraft in 2009 and a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in a mission from 2012-13.
Barron, who was selected to NASA’s Astronaut Corps in 2017 along with Chari, the most recent recruit, had previously served as a submarine warfare officer for the Navy, and told reporters that he learned about that experience and the knowledge of spaceflight. saw many similarities between
The pair are also in the mix for NASA’s Artemis mission to return humans to the Moon later this decade.
Maurer, a materials science engineer, will become the 12th German to go to space and will join fellow ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet of France on the ISS, an overlap that will likely last for a few days when the French with the rest of their lives on Earth. will come back. Crew-2 Allies.
After a 22-hour journey, Dheeraj will autonomously dock with the space station at 12:10 a.m. Monday (0410 GMT).
– Growing plants without soil –
Scientific highlights of the mission include an experiment to grow plants in space without soil or other growth mediums, and another to create optical fibers in microgravity, which prior research has suggested may be the same as those made on Earth. The quality will be better.
Maurer will help operate the European robotic arm that is currently being installed on the Russian side of the ISS, and test CIMON – an artificial intelligence subsidiary developed by the German space agency DLR, Airbus and IBM.
“This is an experiment that is really paving the way for exploration,” he said.
For example, it may one day serve as a geology specialist that astronauts on future missions to Mars can consult for quick answers because the interval to communicate with Earth will be 40 minutes, he said.
Crew-3 astronauts will also perform spacewalks to complete upgrades to the station’s solar panels, and will appear in late 2021 for two tourism missions, including Japanese tourists aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, and the Space-X Axiom Crew, set To launch in February 2022.
Crew-3 is part of NASA’s multi-billion dollar partnership with SpaceX, signed after ending the Space Shuttle program in 2011, to restore the US’s ability to carry out human spaceflight .
Boeing is also part of the same commercial program, but its Starliner capsule has been hit with delays and won’t fly its first crew until late 2022 at the earliest.
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