OrbitalHub

The European Space Agency has taken a significant step toward ensuring its astronauts continue flying to the International Space Station in the final years of the orbital laboratory’s life. On March 19, 2026, the ESA Council endorsed a project called ESA Provided Institutional Crew, or EPIC, which will send European astronauts to the ISS on a dedicated SpaceX Crew Dragon mission in early 2028. This marks a new chapter in European human spaceflight, moving beyond reliance on seats provided by NASA or commercial partners toward a fully European-operated crewed mission.

The decision emerged from a meeting of ESA member states in Paris, where Director General Josef Aschbacher emphasized the urgency of providing flight opportunities for the agency’s astronaut corps. Europe currently has five career astronauts who joined the agency in 2022, and only a limited number of ISS mission slots remain before the station’s planned retirement around 2030. “We have five career astronauts that I intend to fly in the next few years, and EPIC is one way of making sure that these career astronauts can go to the space station, do research and certainly also enlarge our experience,” Aschbacher stated at a press briefing following the council meeting.

ESA’s new astronaut corps has already begun its journey to space through other avenues. Sophie Adenot became the first of the 2022 class to reach the orbital laboratory, currently serving as part of NASA’s Crew-12 mission. Raphaël Liégeois is expected to fly in late 2027 or early 2028. However, these assignments rely entirely on decisions made by NASA or commercial partners. EPIC gives ESA control over its own crew assignments and mission planning, a level of autonomy the agency has rarely enjoyed in its history of human spaceflight.

The EPIC mission will differ substantially from the short-duration commercial astronaut flights that European astronauts have participated in recently. Swedish astronaut Marcus Wandt flew on Axiom Space’s Ax-3 mission in 2024, and Polish astronaut SÅ‚awosz UznaÅ„ski-WiÅ›niewski followed on the Ax-4 mission in 2025. Both of those flights lasted approximately two weeks, focusing primarily on specific research experiments for which the astronauts trained. The EPIC mission will extend to one month, allowing European astronauts to participate more fully in station operations, including maintenance tasks that typically fall to the long-duration crew.

This extended duration also provides ESA with valuable experience in managing longer-duration missions that will prove essential when the International Space Station gives way to commercial alternatives. The agency has committed to participating in future commercial space stations but lacks the operational experience of conducting month-long missions independently. EPIC bridges that gap by giving European flight controllers and mission managers responsibility for a complete crewed flight from launch through landing.

The mission will operate as a fully ESA-led project, though international partners will participate. ESA will be responsible for crew selection, mission planning, and operations, with the spacecraft fully controlled by European mission controllers rather than NASA’s traditional flight director teams. This represents a significant expansion of European human spaceflight capabilities and establishes precedents that will inform how the agency operates on future commercial stations or lunar missions.

Funding details remain under discussion, and ESA has not disclosed the anticipated cost of chartering a Crew Dragon flight. However, the investment reflects strategic priorities that extend beyond the ISS era. As Aschbacher noted, the decision ensures European astronauts maintain their presence in low Earth orbit during a critical transition period when commercial stations are scheduled to begin operations and NASA’s focus shifts increasingly toward lunar exploration through the Artemis program.

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon represents the first commercial spacecraft designed to transport humans to and from orbit, developed through NASA’s Commercial Crew Program beginning in 2010. The spacecraft consists of a reusable crew capsule capable of carrying up to seven passengers, paired with a disposable service module that provides propulsion, electrical power, and life support consumables. The capsule returns to Earth through controlled descent, decelerating from orbital velocity using a heat shield before splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean under parachutes.

The spacecraft’s environmental control and life support systems maintain atmospheric pressure and composition throughout the mission, removing carbon dioxide and humidity while providing fresh oxygen. These systems must operate continuously for the duration of the mission, whether that spans two weeks or one month. The Crew Dragon also incorporates redundancies throughout critical systems, meeting NASA’s human-rating requirements for crew safety during launch, orbital operations, and return.

One of the spacecraft’s distinguishing features is its autonomous docking capability, which allows the vehicle to approach and attach to the International Space Station without crew intervention. This automation reduces crew workload during complex approaches and provides a backup if astronauts are incapacitated. The system performed successfully during initial operational flights and has become standard procedure for crewed approaches to the station.

The United States Congress has directed NASA to extend International Space Station operations through 2032, marking a significant shift from the previous retirement target of 2030. The directive appears in the NASA Authorization Act of 2026, which also includes provisions for establishing a permanent lunar base and developing commercial space station capabilities.

The extension addresses concerns about continuity of human spaceflight capability between the ISS era and the emergence of commercial space stations. NASA had planned to deorbit the station in 2030, allowing it to burn up over a remote ocean area. However, the commercial alternatives expected to replace ISS capabilities have not yet reached operational status.

The legislation reflects congressional skepticism about NASA’s timeline for transitioning to commercial stations. Companies including Axiom Space, Voyager Space, and Blue Origin are developing privately-owned orbital platforms, but each faces significant development challenges. The extended ISS lifetime provides a buffer in case commercial stations encounter delays.

International partnerships add complexity to the extension. The ISS involves NASA, Roscosmos, JAXA, ESA, and CSA, with Russia notably announcing plans to withdraw from the project. Any extension requires coordination with international partners, and political tensions may complicate negotiations. The station’s Russian segment has experienced reliability issues, and continued Russian participation remains uncertain.

The station itself has operated continuously since 1998, making it one of the longest-running human spaceflight platforms in history. Its modular design has allowed continuous upgrades and additions over more than two decades of continuous human occupation. However, aging systems require increasing maintenance, and the station’s solar arrays have degraded over time.

Commercial station developers view the extension as both an opportunity and a challenge. The longer ISS lifetime provides additional market opportunity for cargo and crew services, but delays the potential revenue from commercial station operations. Companies had structured their business plans around the 2030 retirement timeline, and the extension may require reassessment of development schedules.

NASA has advocated for the extension, arguing that maintaining human spaceflight capability in low Earth orbit serves both scientific and strategic interests. The station supports research in biology, physics, and materials science, and provides a platform for understanding long-duration spaceflight effects critical to future deep space missions.

The authorization act also addresses spacesuit development, directing NASA to obtain the capability to develop spacesuits independently. Currently, NASA relies on Axiom Space for the suits planned for lunar missions, following Collins Aerospace’s withdrawal from the program in 2024. This directive aims to ensure multiple sources for critical spaceflight hardware.

Looking beyond 2032, the transition to commercial stations will require careful coordination. NASA plans to be one customer among several for commercial platforms, avoiding the single-vendor dependency that characterized the commercial crew competition.

Mea AI adiutor dicit:

The Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) is a NASA mission launched in June 2017 and mounted on the International Space Station (ISS). Its primary objective is to study neutron stars—ultra-dense remnants of massive stars that have undergone supernova explosions. By observing X-ray emissions from these celestial objects, NICER aims to provide insights into their internal structures and the fundamental physics governing matter under extreme conditions.

NICER’s core component is the X-ray Timing Instrument (XTI), designed for high-precision timing and spectroscopy of soft X-rays in the 0.2–12 keV energy range. The XTI comprises 56 co-aligned X-ray concentrator optics, each paired with a silicon drift detector. These concentrators utilize grazing-incidence optics with 24 nested mirrors to focus incoming X-rays onto their respective detectors, enhancing sensitivity and resolution.

NICER is mounted on the ISS’s ExPRESS Logistics Carrier-2. It features a two-axis pointing system that allows the instrument to track celestial targets across the sky. An integrated star tracker ensures precise alignment, enabling NICER to observe multiple targets during each 92-minute orbit of the ISS.

To achieve its scientific goals, NICER incorporates a GPS-based timing system capable of tagging photon arrival times with sub-microsecond accuracy. This high temporal resolution is crucial for studying the rapid rotational periods of pulsars and other time-sensitive phenomena.

NICER has significantly advanced our understanding of neutron star interiors by providing precise measurements of their masses and radii. These observations have helped constrain the equation of state for ultra-dense matter, shedding light on the behavior of matter at densities exceeding those found in atomic nuclei.

An extension of NICER’s mission, known as SEXTANT (Station Explorer for X-ray Timing and Navigation Technology), successfully demonstrated the use of X-ray pulsars for autonomous spacecraft navigation. By measuring the timing of X-ray pulses from known pulsars, SEXTANT was able to determine the ISS’s position in space, paving the way for future deep-space navigation systems.

In 2018, NICER discovered an X-ray pulsar in the fastest known stellar orbit, with a companion star completing an orbit every 38 minutes. This finding provides valuable data on the dynamics of compact binary systems and the extreme gravitational environments in which they exist.

NICER observed the brightest X-ray burst ever recorded from the neutron star SAX J1808.4−3658. This event offered insights into thermonuclear processes on neutron star surfaces and the mechanisms driving such energetic emissions.

Although primarily focused on neutron stars, NICER has also contributed to black hole research. It mapped “light echoes” from the stellar-mass black hole MAXI J1820+070, revealing changes in the size and shape of the surrounding accretion disk and corona. These observations enhance our understanding of black hole accretion processes and their immediate environments.

In May 2023, NICER’s thermal shields developed a leak, allowing stray light to interfere with its X-ray detectors. To address this issue, NASA designed specialized patches delivered to the ISS via the Cygnus NG-21 resupply mission in August 2024. Astronauts successfully applied these patches during a spacewalk on January 16, 2025, restoring NICER’s full observational capabilities.

As of early 2025, NICER has contributed to over 300 scientific publications, underscoring its significant role in advancing astrophysical research. Its high-precision measurements continue to provide valuable data for the scientific community, enhancing our understanding of neutron stars and other cosmic phenomena.

Video credit: NASA Goddard

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NASA dicit:

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, with the company’s uncrewed Dragon spacecraft on top, lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Loaded with scientific experiments and supplies, the unpiloted SpaceX CRS-27 cargo ship automatically docked to the International Space Station’s forward port of the Harmony module March 16. The SpaceX resupply craft will remain on orbit for a month-long visit.

Credit: NASA/SpaceX

Wikipedia dicit:

The Cygnus spacecraft is an expendable American cargo spacecraft developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation and now manufactured and launched by Northrop Grumman Space Systems as part of NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) program. It is launched by Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket or ULA’s Atlas V and is designed to transport supplies to the International Space Station (ISS) following the retirement of the American Space Shuttle.

Since August 2000, ISS resupply missions have been regularly flown by the Russian Progress spacecraft, as well as by the European Automated Transfer Vehicle, and the Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle. With the Cygnus spacecraft and the SpaceX Dragon, NASA seeks to increase its partnerships with domestic commercial aviation and aeronautics industry.

The Cygnus spacecraft consists of two basic components: the Pressurized Cargo Module (PCM) and the Service Module (SM). The PCM is manufactured by Thales Alenia Space in Turin, (Italy). The initial PCMs have an empty mass of 1,500 kg and a volume of 18 m3·. The service module is built by Orbital ATK and is based on their GEOStar and LEOStar spacecraft buses as well as components from the development of the Dawn spacecraft. It has a gross mass of 1,800 kg with propulsion provided by thrusters using the hypergolic propellants hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide (the propellant mass is 800 kg). The service module is capable of producing up to 4 kW of electrical power via two gallium arsenide solar arrays. On 12 November 2009, Dutch Space announced it will provide the solar arrays for the initial Cygnus spacecraft.

Video credit: NASA

NASA dicit:

SpaceX CRS-23, also known as SpX-23, is a Commercial Resupply Service mission to the International Space Station. The mission was contracted by NASA and was flown by SpaceX using the Cargo Dragon C208. This was the third flight for SpaceX under NASA’s CRS Phase 2 contract awarded in January 2016. A NASA Flight Planning Integration Panel (FPIP) from 2019 indicates that SpaceX cargo missions will begin to extend their duration to 60 days and beyond starting with CRS-23.

SpaceX plans to reuse the Cargo Dragons up to five times. The Cargo Dragon launches without SuperDraco abort engines, without seats, cockpit controls and the life support system required to sustain astronauts in space. This newer design provides several benefits, including a faster process to recover, refurbish and re-fly versus the earlier Dragon CRS design used for ISS cargo missions.

The GITAI S1 Robotic Arm Tech Demo will test GITAI Japan Inc.’s microgravity robot by placing the arm inside the newly added Nanoracks Bishop Airlock, which was carried to the station by Dragon C208.2 during the SpaceX CRS-21 mission last year. Once inside the airlock, the arm will perform numerous tests to demonstrate its versatility and dexterity.

Designed by GITAI Japan Inc., the robot will work as a general-purpose helper under the pressurized environment inside the Bishop Airlock. It will operate tools and switches and run scientific experiments. The next step will be to test it outside the ISS in the harsh space environment. The robot will be able to perform tasks both autonomously and via teleoperations. Its arm has eight degrees of freedom and a 1-meter reach. GITAI S1 is a semi-autonomous/semi-teleoperated robotic arm designed to conduct specified tasks internally and externally on space stations, on-orbit servicing, and lunar base development. By combining autonomous control via AI and teleoperations via the specially designed GITAI manipulation system H1, GITAI S1 on its own, possesses the capability to conduct generous-purpose tasks (manipulation of switches, tools, soft objects; conducting science experiments and assembly; high-load operations; etc.) that were extremely difficult for industrial robots such as task specific robotic arms to do.

Video credit: NASA/SpaceX