Key Highlights
- The International Space Station (ISS) is gearing up to arrive with three new space station crew members due to begin their mission on the 21st of September.
- Meanwhile, in the orbiting lab, the Expedition 67 astronauts keep investigating a wide range of microgravity phenomena to benefit humans on and off the Earth.
NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin will launch the Soyuz MS-22 rocket for their trip to the space station. Currently, it stands at its launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
The trio is scheduled to lift off inside the Soyuz crew ship at 9:54 a.m. EDT (6:54 a.m. PDT) on 21st September and docked to the Rassvet module less than three-and-a-half hours later. That will mark the start of a six-month research mission in orbit around the Earth.
Three cosmonauts who have been living in space since 18th March are scheduled to board their Soyuz MS-21 crew ship and return to Earth just over a week later. The Soyuz vehicle, with station Commander Oleg Artemyev, Flight Engineers Denis Matveev, and Sergey Korsakov inside, will undock from the Prichal module and descend through Earth’s atmosphere.
Finally, it will bounce to a landing in Kazakhstan, bringing the threesome’s six-month-long orbital journey to an end. In addition to conditioning their bodies for returning to Earth’s gravity on Tuesday, the trio also spent the day packing cargo and personal gear for stowage inside the returning Soyuz.
Next week, during the traditional Change of Command ceremony, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti will take over as station commander from Artemyev before he departs.
Research operations aboard the orbiting outpost are ongoing, whether the astronauts run the experiments themselves or scientists conduct the studies remotely from control centers on the ground.
Technology is also key to the success of crewed missions. It would allow astronauts to concentrate more on science activities and become less reliant on ground controllers.
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