SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, named Resilience by the crew members, holds the first commercial crew to launch to the International Space Station

In Issue #4 of our Astronomy Weekly we already reported that on November 15th of this year, SpaceX’s Crew-1 mission launched on a Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This week we go into a little more details.

Image Credit: NASA TV

SpaceX’s endeavors are part of NASA’s commercial crew program to take astronauts to and from the International Space Station using private American companies, and to rely less on Roscosmos’ -Russian Space Agency- services to transport astronauts.

The Crew-1 consists of:

• NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins as the Crew-1 commander.
• NASA astronaut Shannon Walker as the Crew-1 mission specialist.
• JAXA -Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency- astronaut Soichi Noguchi as the Crew-1 mission specialist.
• NASA astronaut Victor Glover as the Crew-1 mission pilot.

Alongside their roles on the mission, all of the crew members will join expedition 64 on aboard the International Space Station as flight engineers.

The Resilience docked with the ISS on November 16th, and the following day -November 17th- the hatch was open and astronauts bagan moving into the station. The mission will last for six months, during which, astronauts on board will be doing various scientific experiments from studying neural functions and heart conditions and testing artificial tissues in microgravity, to planting radishes in space in order to understand plants’ behavior and growth in microgravity.

Additionally, members of expedition 64 will be testing parts of the new NASA Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU) spacesuit in microgravity, which is one of two new spacesuits designed for the Artemis program to go back to the Moon by 2024. Testing will not take place during a live spacewalk, rather it will be via simulated 8-hour long spacewalks