Elijah Williams
Two days after a rare last-second launch abortA Russian Soyuz spacecraft lifted off Saturday on a flight to the International Space Station, carrying two short-stay crew members and a NASA astronaut bound for a six-month mission.
Soyuz MS-25/71S commander Oleg Novitskiy, Belarusian guest cosmonaut Marina Vasilevskaya and NASA veteran Tracy Dyson exited the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 8:36 a.m. EDT (5:36 p.m. local time) and entered orbit eight minutes and 45 seconds later. .
NASA/Bill Ingalls
The launch was originally planned for last Thursday, but the countdown was aborted 20 seconds before launch when computers detected low voltage readings in the electrical system of the Soyuz 2.1a rocket’s first stage.
It was the first abort of its kind for a Soyuz rocket, and it took Russian engineers a day to review telemetry, identify the problem and replace the suspect batteries. Subsequent tests showed that all systems were ready for a second launch attempt on Saturday.
As the Soyuz countdown progressed toward a late afternoon launch in Kazakhstan, a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship launched Thursday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station reached the space station and departed to dock at 7:19 a.m. local time. bringing 6,200 pounds of scientific equipment, spare parts and supplies to the laboratory complex crew, including fresh food and coffee kits.
The Soyuz is expected to reach the space station on Monday, moving to dock at a port of the station’s Earth-facing Prichal module at 11:09 a.m. local time.
NASA/Bill Ingalls
Waiting to welcome them aboard will be station commander Oleg Kononenko, cosmonauts Nikolai Chub and Alexander Grebenkin and NASA astronauts Loral O’Hara, Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps.
Vasilevskaya, a talented ballroom dancer and Belavia Airlines flight attendant, is the first citizen of Belarus, a staunch ally of Russia, to fly in space since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
She was selected as a “spaceflight participant” in a national competition and will conduct research for scientists in Belarus as part of a program known as Belarusian Women in Space.
Dyson is making its third space flight and second aboard a Soyuz. Despite political tension between the United States and Russia, the crew appears to get along well.
“It was actually a real pleasure to work with Marina,” said Dyson. “She has a fantastic attitude, and that helps a lot when you’re working together with emergency masks on your face in terrible conditions, trying to get through (emergency training) procedures.
NASA
Kononenko, Chub and O’Hara were launched to the station on September 15 aboard the Soyuz MS-24/70S spacecraft. Dominick, Barratt, Epps and Grebenkin launched on March 3 aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon ferry. Known as Crew 8, they replaced four other Crew Dragon crew members – Crew 7 – who returned to Earth on March 12 after a brief transfer.
Novitskiy and Vasilevskaya plan to spend 12 days aboard the space station. O’Hara will replace Dyson on the trip home, and the trio will return to Earth on April 6 aboard the Soyuz MS-24/70S spacecraft that carried O’Hara, Kononenko and Chub into orbit last September.
Kononenko and Chub are in the middle of a planned year-long stay aboard the station. If all goes well, they will return to Earth next September, together with Dyson, using the Soyuz MS-25/71S ferry delivered by Novitskiy’s crew.
With O’Hara’s return, five of the station’s seven full-time crew members will be replaced, completing the final crew rotation sequence.
Dyson first flew aboard the space shuttle Endeavor for a 13-day visit to the space station in 2007. Three years later, she blasted off aboard a Soyuz spacecraft as a member of the long-duration station’s crew, logging 176 days aboard from the outpost between April and the end of September 2010.
During that flight, a now-famous photo of Dyson captured her looking at the blue-and-white Earth suspended in the darkness of space, as seen from the laboratory’s multi-windowed Cupola compartment.
NASA
In an interview with CBS News, she said she now knows what to expect and “this time, I’m just going to see how I can help others.”
“Part of the beauty of living aboard is being part of a crew and a team and helping each other,” she said. “So if I have some free time and the rest of my compadres are working, then I will certainly try to help where I can. But if we’re all having some free time, I’m really looking forward to that view from the window.
“I have a great memory (of the experience) and that photo of the dome certainly captures that, of seeing the Earth. And that never gets old.”
The training needed to get there is another matter, she said.
“That’s the hardest part of what we do, the training, which requires us to be away from home for long periods of time,” she said. “When I did this on my first two flights, it wasn’t so bad because it was just me at home. I had a dog that other people were willing to take care of.
“But now it’s a little different and I have a lot of support from my family, who remind me over and over that I’m doing this for them as much as I am for myself.”
NASA
She will face a very busy six months in space.
Boeing’s Starliner ferry, a NASA-sponsored alternative to SpaceX’s proven Crew Dragon, is expected to take off on its first piloted test flight in early May, carrying NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams to the space station in one flight. shakedown.
If the flight goes well, the Starliner will be certified for use on future ISS crew rotation missions, alternating with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and providing NASA with redundancy when it comes to launching astronauts to and from the space station.
“Today, all of our Crew Dragons are launching (SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets),” said Dana Weigel, space station program manager. “If there was a problem with the F9, for example, and we had to be grounded for a while… if we had another vehicle, we could continue flying.”
And it would help ensure that one or more American astronauts are always aboard the space station.
“So that’s the reason why, when we talk about having multiple suppliers, it’s so important for us to have that ongoing capability,” Weigel said.
In June, NASA plans three spacewalks, or EVAs, to perform a variety of tasks, including preparation work for adding a final set of solar panel blankets.
Astronauts haven’t yet been assigned to the excursions, but Dyson is a spacewalk veteran and her experience could prompt NASA to send her back out.
“We have three EVAs planned for our increment and I am one of the spacewalkers trained to do these EVAs,” she said. “We will see how everything works and who leaves and who stays in to prepare them.”
