Station Expands to 11 Before Next Crew Leaves This Week

Four new crew members are adjusting to life on the International Space Station and gearing up for several months of microgravity research to benefit humans living on and off the Earth. Meanwhile, another quartet that has been orbiting Earth since March is packing up and handing over responsibilities to the new crew before returning to Earth this week.

Expedition 73 expanded to eleven individuals on Saturday when NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 mission docked to the orbital outpost aboard the Dragon spacecraft after launching from Florida about 15 hours earlier. Crew 11’s Commander and Pilot, Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, both from NASA, and Mission Specialists Kimiya Yui from JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Oleg Platonov from Roscosmos spent the weekend unpacking their Dragon spacecraft, reviewing safety procedures, and getting familiar with space station systems.

The crew is well trained for its space research program and will soon begin investigating a wide variety of microgravity phenomena to gain insights only achievable in space. They will explore manufacturing high quality stem cells, alternatives to antibiotics to treat bacterial infections, cell division in plants to promote space agriculture, and more.

NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers along with JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov are helping their new crewmates get up to speed with living and working on the orbital lab. NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 crewmates also will be going home this week aboard another Dragon spacecraft completing a five-month mission. During their stay in space, the crew studied space-caused mental and physical changes in astronauts, blood flow from the brain to the heart, future lunar navigation techniques, and more.

The homebound foursome has spent the last two weeks gathering personal items and cargo for loading inside Dragon. Over the next couple of days, Crew-10 will also pack critical research samples stowed in portable science freezers inside Dragon for retrieval and analysis back on Earth. During the final cargo-packing and scientific sample-stowing duties, the crew will also review departure procedures before entering Dragon and undocking.

NASA astronaut Jonny Kim and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky will continue their mission aboard the station and conduct their complement of space research until December. The trio have been assisting with the crew swap activities as Kim helped Fincke learn to work out on the advanced resistive exercise device. Ryzhikov showed the Crew-11 foursome the location of emergency hardware and how to use NASA and Roscosmos station hardware. Zubritsky helped Peskov as he tested the lower body negative pressure suit that may counteract space-caused head and eye pressure and help crews adjust quicker to the return to Earth’s gravity.

Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station on X, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

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