An international crew has launched towards the International Space Station (ISS) to replace astronauts who returned early following Nasa's first medical evacuation. SpaceX expedited the launch at Nasa’s request, sending American, French, and Russian astronauts on an anticipated eight to nine-month mission, stretching until autumn.
The four are expected to arrive at the orbiting laboratory tomorrow, filling vacancies left by their evacuated colleagues last month and bringing the space station back to full staff. Prior to their arrival, Nasa had put spacewalks on hold and deferred other duties.
The crew includes Nasa’s Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, France’s Sophie Adenot, and Russia’s Andrei Fedyaev. They will join three other astronauts – one American and two Russians – who kept the space station running the past month.
Satisfied with medical procedures already in place, Nasa ordered no extra checkups for the crew ahead of liftoff and no new diagnostic equipment was packed. An ultrasound machine already up there for research went into overdrive on Jan. 7 when used on the ailing crew member. Nasa has not revealed the ill astronaut’s identity or health issue. All four returning astronauts went straight to the hospital after splashing down in the Pacific near San Diego.
It was the first time in 65 years of human spaceflight that Nasa cut short a mission for medical reasons.
With missions becoming longer, Nasa is constantly looking at upgrades to the space station’s medical gear, said deputy program manager Dina Contella. “But there are a lot of things that are just not practical and so that’s when you need to bring astronauts home from space,” she said earlier this week.
In preparation for moon and Mars trips where health care will be even more challenging, the new arrivals will test a filter designed to turn drinking water into emergency IV fluid, try out an ultrasound system that relies on artificial intelligence and augmented reality instead of experts on the ground, and perform ultrasound scans on their jugular veins in a blood clot study.
They also will demonstrate their moon-landing skills in a simulated test.
Adenot is only the second French woman to launch to space. She was 14 when Claudie Haignere flew to Russia’s space station Mir in 1996, inspiring her to become an astronaut. Haignere traveled to Cape Canaveral to cheer her on.
Hathaway, like Adenot, is new to space, while Meir and Fedyaev are making their second station trip. On her first mission in 2019, Meir took part in the first all-female spacewalk. The other half of that spacewalk, Christina Koch, is among the four Artemis II astronauts waiting to fly around the moon as early as March. A ship-to-ship radio linkup is planned between the two crews.
Meir wasn’t sure astronauts would return to the moon during her career. “Now we’re right here on the precipice of the Artemis II mission,” she said ahead of liftoff. “The fact that they will be in space at the same time as us … it’s so cool to be an astronaut now, it’s so exciting.”
SpaceX launched the latest crew from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Elon Musk’s company is preparing its neighboring Kennedy Space Center launch pad for the super-sized Starships, which Nasa needs to land astronauts on the moon.
