It’s Spooky Season! On Halloween day SpaceX will launch the third operational crewed mission (Crew-3) to the International Space Station (ISS), as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. A flight-proven Falcon 9 rocket will liftoff on October 31st at 2:21 a.m. EDT to propel the Crew Dragon Endurance spacecraft to orbit from Launch Complex-39A at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC).
The Crew-3 mission will launch three NASA astronauts to the orbiting laboratory: Mission Commander Raja Chari, Pilot Tom Marshburn, and Mission Specialist Kayla Barron, alongside one European Space Agency astronaut, Matthias Maurer, who will also serve as a mission specialist. It will be the first spaceflight for Chari, Maurer, and Barron. Marshburn is a veteran astronaut, he has flown three times to outer space. They will arrive at the Space Station after a 24-hour journey. Crew Dragon Endurance is set to dock to the ISS Harmony module by November 1st at 12:10 a.m. EDT, delivering over 400 pounds of cargo. NASA will broadcast the mission Live via NASA TV, linked in the video below.
The astronauts arrived to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday morning, where they will undergo final preparations before their weekend launch. The quartet landed at Kennedy’s Launch and Landing Facility after departing earlier today from Ellington Field near the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Crew-3 participated in a media event upon arrival, where they were greeted by NASA and ESA officials and shared their excitement. “We're absolutely thrilled to be here, as you can imagine, and quite humbled by seeing the millions of human hours that go into getting us ready and getting the vehicle ready, all for this one moment,” Marshburn said. “We couldn't be more excited and ready to go.”
“We're really excited to hit the deck here at KSC and to join the crew for Expedition 66 aboard the Space Station,” Barron told reporters on Tuesday. “I think for all of us, especially the rookies on the flight, it still feels a little surreal, like we don't really believe that we're actually going to space, hopefully in the early hours of Sunday morning.”
“I think for me, the thing that is most unique about this week is that we pretend to be astronauts so often – we're always training – and now we're going to see our vehicle and it's actually the real deal,” Chari added. “We have a mockup at SpaceX and we have one in Houston, so we train a lot. And when we see the ISS, it will be the actual ISS, so I think processing that is a pretty cool theme of this week.”
During the press event livestreamed by NASA, Barron also shared that she will be riding a spacecraft without ever even seeing a single rocket launch. –“This will be the first rocket I've seen in person, so I'm really excited for the whole experience,” Barron shared with a smile. “As the launch gets closer and we get to see our flight capsule and climb around, and then once we get to see it again this week integrated with the rocket… those are the things that I think are helping us kind of deal with reality and the fact that we're actually gonna’ launch here on Sunday.”
Maurer shared he looks forward to all the science research they will conduct in microgravity during their six-month-long stay at ISS. “I'm really excited about all the things we're doing to inform future exploration…,” he said. “We're doing a lot of work on our life-support equipment, trying to understand how to make it more reliable, make the maintenance easier, things like that to help facilitate future life-support systems on the Moon and eventually on Mars.”
“I'm particularly excited for the work that we do on ourselves, because we're guinea pigs up there,” Marshburn said. “And that excites me because of what we find out about the human body.” Marshburn is a medical doctor who worked as an emergency physician before joining NASA, so, he really looks forward to learning more about how outer space environment affects the human body. “Being exposed to microgravity that long, it's like an accelerated aging process […] with bone and muscle wasting that we have to counteract with the exercise. We've been doing this for a couple of decades now, but we're still adding to the knowledge,” he said. You can watch the 30-minute media event in the Tweet linked below. NASA will host more conferences that you can watch Live this week, see schedule.
LIVE NOW: #Crew3 astronauts arrive at @NASAKennedy ahead of their Oct. 31 launch to the @Space_Station! Hear from @Astro_Raja, @AstroMarshburn, Kayla Barron, and @Astro_Matthias before they leave Earth. https://t.co/gri2Gv32Vy
— NASA (@NASA) October 26, 2021
NASA TV SCHEDULE
Wednesday, Oct. 27
8 a.m. – Virtual Crew Media Engagement at Kennedy with Crew-3 astronauts.
Thursday, Oct. 28
1 p.m. – Science Media Teleconference to discuss investigations the Crew-3 crew will support during their mission.
Friday, Oct. 29
12 p.m. – NASA Administrator Media Briefing
10 p.m. – Prelaunch News Conference at Kennedy (no earlier than one hour after completion of the Launch Readiness Review).
Saturday, Oct. 30
10 p.m. – NASA Television launch coverage begins. NASA Television will have continuous coverage, including launch, docking, hatch open, and welcome ceremony.
Sunday, Oct. 31
2:21 a.m. – Launch
Monday, Nov. 1
12:10 a.m. – Docking
1:50 a.m. – Hatch Opening
2:20 a.m. – Welcoming Ceremony
WATCH IT LIVE!
Featured Image Source: NASA
About the Author
Evelyn Janeidy Arevalo
Evelyn J. Arevalo joined Tesmanian in 2019 to cover news as a Space Journalist and SpaceX Starbase Texas Correspondent. Evelyn is specialized in rocketry and space exploration. The main topics she covers are SpaceX and NASA.
