During this first official manned flight, four astronauts are brought to the International Space Station.

The launch is scheduled for next Sunday (November 15), at 1.49 a.m. (Dutch time). The Crew Dragon will then, propelled by a Falcon 9 rocket, take to the skies from the well-known Kennedy Space Center in Florida. There are four astronauts on board, three of which are employed by NASA and one employed by the Japanese space agency JAXA.

Seven astronauts on the ISS
After hopefully a smooth launch and flight, the astronauts will join the three astronauts already on the International Space Station. This brings the total crew of the space station to seven astronauts; one more than usual.

The four astronauts entering the space station later this month are Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker (all employed by NASA) and Soichi Noguchi (employed by JAXA). They will stay on the ISS for at least six months before returning to Earth with Crew Dragon.

Quarantine
In anticipation of their launch, the four astronauts went into quarantine this week. This is a standard procedure to ensure that the astronauts are healthy at the time of launch. This is of course important for the astronauts themselves, but also for their colleagues who are already on the ISS. In view of the corona pandemic, the quarantine rules have been expanded somewhat. For example, anyone who is in close contact with the crew during the quarantine period – just like the crew itself – is tested twice for the virus as a precaution.

Second manned flight, first official flight
The mission will go down in the books as the second manned flight of Crew Dragon, a spacecraft that – like the Falcon 9 rocket – was developed by the American space company SpaceX. Earlier this year, the company launched a manned Crew Dragon with two astronauts on board. This was, however a test flight. That flight – with two astronauts on board – went by the book. And so it is time for the first official manned flight to the ISS.

Commercial flights
Astronauts are regularly dropped off on the International Space Station, but until recently they only used spacecraft from governmental space agencies, such as the Soyuz (owned by the Russian space agency) and the Space Shuttle (owned by NASA, but not in use since 2011). Because NASA wants to focus on manned missions to the moon and later also Mars and does not want to be completely dependent on the Russians for supplying and manning the ISS (as was the case in recent years due to the retirement of the Space Shuttle), it has commercial space companies are asked to develop rockets and spacecraft that can transport goods and (NASA) astronauts to the ISS. In recent years, the companies SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corporation (now part of Northrop Grumman) have already regularly resupplied the ISS. And now the time for manned commercial flights has arrived. NASA has awarded this to SpaceX and Boeing. The former company has already completed a manned test flight to the ISS and an official flight is planned. Things are a bit different for Boeing; the company has had some setbacks, making a manned flight to the ISS longer than hoped for.–

Once on board the ISS, the astronauts will not be bored. NASA hopes that more research can be done with the extra large crew. In addition, there are also a few spacewalks on the agenda. In addition, the astronauts will witness a number of firsts. For example, they will see the Cargo Dragon – a simplified version of the Crew Dragon – dock for the first time. In addition, they are also expected to welcome an unmanned Boeing CST-100 Starliner. The spaceship is still making a second test flight – after the first failed earlier this year – before actually transporting people to the ISS. Once the mission of the astronauts Hopkins, Glover, Walker and Noguchi is over, they will return to Earth with Crew Dragon. The spacecraft then lands in the waters off the coast of Florida, after which the crew is taken ashore by ship and then transported by plane to the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The first official manned flight to the ISS is of course a boost for SpaceX, which has been working towards this for years. But flight is also very important for NASA. The space agency is thus one step closer to a situation in which it can focus on manned flights to the moon (and later also Mars), while studies that take place in the ISS and are of great importance for those space travel and a longer stay on the planet moon or Mars, in the meantime, can also continue as usual.