Watch NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 astronauts arrive at the International Space Station aboard their Dragon spacecraft Freedom. Docking is scheduled for approximately 7:40 p.m. EDT (23:40 UTC).
Once aboard the orbiting laboratory, astronauts Bob Hines, Jessica Watkins, and Kjell Lindgren of NASA, alongside Samantha Cristoforetti of ESA (European Space Agency), will spend nearly six months conducting new scientific research in areas such as materials science, health technologies, and plant science to prepare for human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit and to benefit life on Earth.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 3:52 a.m. EDT on April 27, 2022. Onboard the Dragon spacecraft are Crew-4 astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Robert Hines, and Jessica Watkins, all NASA astronauts, along with Samantha Cristoforetti with ESA (European Space Agency) for the mission to the International Space Station.
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.
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.
Expedition 64 Commander Sergey Ryzhikov of Roscosmos and Flight Engineers Kate Rubins of NASA and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov of Roscosmos took a short ride away from the International Space Station March 19, undocking their Russian Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft from the Rassvet module on the Earth-facing port of the station’s Russian segment and redocking to the Poisk module on the station’s space-facing side.
The relocation maneuver cleared the Rassvet port for the April 9 arrival of three additional crew members, Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov of Roscosmos and Mark Vande Hei of NASA, who will dock their Soyuz MS-18 vehicle after their launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
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