SpaceX sent the Crew Dragon-5 spacecraft to the ISS with four crew members, including Russian Anna Kikina (video)
The Crew-5 mission successfully launched on October 5 at noon EST and the first stage launch vehicle landed on the autonomous drone ship. The crew is currently en route to the ISS.
The launch was delayed for several days due to the devastating Hurricane Ian that passed through Florida last week, and today the historic Crew-5 mission with four astronauts on board successfully launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. 9.5 minutes after launch, the launch vehicle landed on the autonomous drone ship. It was the first ever landing of the booster, which debuted in space today.
Falcon 9’s first stage booster has landed on the Just Read the Instructions droneship pic.twitter.com/qKk3uk4J9B
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 5, 2022
The second stage worked normally and successfully delivered the ship to the planned orbit.
Crew-4 on orbit pic.twitter.com/pNlRTTdSYE
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 27, 2022
SpaceX’s Dragon Endurance spacecraft has launched with four astronauts on board, two of whom are making their first space flight. The crew includes NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada. Mann will make history as the first Native American NASA woman to go into space, and she will also become the first female commander of the Dragon crew capsule.
Crew-5 is go for launch pic.twitter.com/gfVxhtLrdC
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 5, 2022
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Koichi Wakata and Anna Kikina from Roscosmos also joined the flight.
The crew will stay on the ISS for about six months, during which the astronauts will conduct research. Experiments will include research on printing human organs in space, studying fuel systems that work on the moon, and heart disease. These are just a few of the more than 200 science experiments and technology demonstrations that will take place during their mission.
They are due to dock with the space lab at 4:57 p.m. ET on Thursday, October 6. This quartet will join the station’s current crew of seven, four of whom are members of the SpaceX Crew-4 mission. After the departure of the astronauts of the previous mission from the ISS in a few days, the command will pass from the European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Christophoret to Nicole Mann.
As always, you can watch the launch from the initial preparatory stage on the live broadcast of SpaceX or on the NASA website.
Crew-5 marks the eighth crewed mission for SpaceX, with two more scheduled for late spring 2023.
Crew-5 was also the 44th orbital launch of 2022 for Elon Musk’s company. SpaceX plans to make two more launches in the near future. Tomorrow, the company is scheduled to launch a large batch of its Starlink Internet satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and two commercial communications satellites from the Space Force Station at Cape Canaveral in Florida.
