One mission concluded, one moved into its next phase, and another is getting ready to launch. Here’s a brief recap of the last few days’ worth of human spaceflight stories.
NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson returns from the ISS
After 184 days in space, NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson made a soft touchdown in the steppe of Kazakhstan inside her Soyuz spacecraft. Dyson flew to the ISS back in March on the MS-25 Soyuz. She was joined by Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky and Belarusian spaceflight participant Maryna Vasileuskaya; they only stayed for 12 days on the station before returning home.
Dyson returned on the same spacecraft but with Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub, who spent over a year in space. The parachute-assisted landing took place at about 7:59 A.M. ET, concluding her mission. This was Dyson’s third spaceflight.
Dyson was replaced on the station by Don Pettit on the MS-26 Soyuz launch earlier this month. He will stay on the station for a similar amount of time, about six months, before eventually being relieved by former Navy SEAL, now astronaut, Jonny Kim on MS-27.
Starliner crew member takes charge of ISS
With the departure of Kononenko on MS-25, a new commander of the station was needed. Usually, the station flips between a Russian cosmonaut and someone from either NASA, JAXA, or ESA. With the shake-up of new crew members due to Starliner’s crew extended stay, Suni Williams was chosen to take over command.
This is Williams’s third time on an expedition to the ISS, even though this one wasn’t planned. The crew of Starliner’s CFT have completely transitioned over to full time members of the ISS crew after their spacecraft was seen unfit to safely return them back to Earth.
Alongside Starliner’s commander, Butch Wilmore, the two will stay on board until the spring when they will use SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft for their trip home.
For now, the two are linked to Crew-8‘s Dragon for any emergency departures. However, Crew-9‘s Dragon will have two open seats as NASA modified the crew lineup to only have two crew members on ascent.
Crew-9 awaits clearer skies
The crew of SpaceX’s Crew-9 arrived at Kennedy Space Center Saturday ahead of what was then a planned launch for today (Thursday). However, due to the developing Hurricane Helene in the Gulf of Mexico, weather concerns have pushed the nearest launch date to Saturday afternoon.
However, Saturday’s, and its next two launch attempt windows, all have roughly, or worse, 50-50 shots at launching due to weather concerns. So here’s to a great weekend of not knowing what SpaceX will be doing.
The Crew-9 mission will be SpaceX’s first crewed launch from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Earlier this year the company finished upgrades to the pad for faster turnarounds between launches and the addition of a crew access arm. The pad has since already seen the launch of uncrewed cargo Dragon missions, but this will be its first crewed departure.
The station was the site of America’s first crewed spaceflights but starting with Apollo, most missions moved to NASA’s LC-39A and B pads on its own dedicated center. Starliner CFT brought crewed missions back to the station with its mission, and now SpaceX will make that a more regular thing with its Dragon spacecraft.
