Space crew lets loose professional#

Kayla Barron, who has a a master’s degree in nuclear engineering from the University of Cambridge, was selected as a NASA astronaut in 2017 and comes directly from a field of work that involves extreme living conditions and long bouts of isolation: submarines. The issue was not a medical emergency nor was it Covid-related, the space agency said, though it declined to give further details. The flight was then delayed further by a “medical issue involving one of the Crew-3 astronauts,” according to NASA. Such an emergency exit has never had to be carried out by SpaceX, but having that option - and ensuring a recovery could be smoothly executed - is one of the reasons the space agency says Crew Dragon is among the safest spacecraft ever flown. Crew Dragon’s ability to jettison a crew to safety if something goes wrong is one of the reasons the space agency says it is among the safest spacecraft ever flown. SpaceX had intended to launch this mission, called Crew-3, on Halloween, but liftoff was delayed because of some rough weather over the Atlantic Ocean that could’ve impacted rescue operations if the rocket were to misfire and force the astronauts to make an emergency splashdown landing in the ocean. NASA and SpaceX said the issue had been fixed on the capsule used to launch the Crew-3 mission Wednesday. The issue left the Crew-2 astronauts without a bathroom option during their nine-hour return flight from the ISS on Monday. The Crew-3 launch comes after another group of four astronauts returned from the ISS on Monday, capping off the mission dubbed Crew-2.īoth of the flights came as SpaceX and NASA worked to troubleshoot issues with the design of the toilet onboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule. They were forced instead to rely on undergarments - essentially adult diapers - during their nine-hour return trip. The astronauts had found their capsule also had evidence of “contamination” from a leaky toilet, according to NASA. The issue also prevented a group of astronauts from using their Crew Dragon spacecraft’s on-board toilet during their trek back to Earth from the International Space Station on Monday. “That allowed urine essentially to not go into the storage tank, but essentially go into the fan system.” “There’s a storage tank where the the urine goes to be stored there’s a tube that came disconnected or came unglued,” said William Gerstenmaier, a former associate administrator at NASA who now works as SpaceX’s head of mission assurance, during a press conference last month. SpaceX splashdown: Astronauts return home from six-month ISS mission After the spacecraft returned home, SpaceX disassembled the capsule and found “contamination.” “The Inspiration4 crew were alerted to an issue with the onboard toilet’s fan, which is used to create suction that is necessary when going to the bathroom in microgravity. In a press conference earlier this week, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager described the Inspiration mission as a “gift” because it brought issues with a key component on the Crew Dragon spacecraft - the toilet - into the spotlight so the problem could be fixed for future NASA missions.

Space crew lets loose professional#

That mission carried four people, none of whom were professional astronauts, on a three-day space flight that orbited higher than any spacecraft has traveled since the moon missions of the 1970s.

In fact, the four professional astronauts on the Crew-3 mission -NASA’s Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, and Kayla Barron, as well as the European Space Agency’s Matthias Maurer - will be the first to board a Crew Dragon since SpaceX’s Inspiration4 all-civilian tourist mission. The company still owns and operates the vehicle and NASA is considered just another customer for these missions. That’s something NASA has wanted to have more control over since its Space Shuttle program retired in 2011, leaving Russia as the only country with the ability to provide ISS transportation.īut SpaceX’s Crew Dragon is far from another space shuttle.

This mission, called Crew-3, is the fourth mission in a partnership between SpaceX and NASA to make routine trips to the ISS in order to keep the 21-year-old space station adequately staffed. The astronauts will spend the next day strapped inside their spacecraft as it maneuvers through orbit and prepares to link up with the ISS, which orbits more than 200 miles above Earth’s surface.ĭocking is scheduled for 7:10 pm ET Thursday. The spacecraft, with three NASA astronauts and one European astronaut onboard, will spend all day Wednesday maneuvering closer to the International Space Station (ISS), where it’ll dock late Thursday kicking off a six-month science and research mission.