{"id":13755,"date":"2018-06-05T19:28:35","date_gmt":"2018-06-05T11:28:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/after-previous-crews-return-new-space-station-residents-set-for-launch-wednesday\/"},"modified":"2018-06-05T19:28:35","modified_gmt":"2018-06-05T11:28:35","slug":"after-previous-crews-return-new-space-station-residents-set-for-launch-wednesday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/after-previous-crews-return-new-space-station-residents-set-for-launch-wednesday\/","title":{"rendered":"After previous crew\u2019s return, new space station residents set for launch Wednesday"},"content":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION<\/p>\n

\"\"
NASA astronaut Serena Au\u00f1\u00f3n-Chancellor, Russian Soyuz commander Sergey Prokopyev, and German flight engineer Alexander Gerst are set for launch Wednesday. Credit: NASA\/GCTC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With three space station fliers safely back on Earth after a pinpoint landing Sunday, three fresh crew members made final preparations for launch Wednesday from Kazakhstan to boost the lab\u2019s crew back to six.<\/p>\n

Soyuz MS-09\/55S commander Sergey Prokopyev, German flight engineer Alexander Gerst and NASA physician-astronaut Serena Au\u00f1\u00f3n-Chancellor were scheduled for liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 7:12 a.m. EDT Wednesday (GMT-4; 5:12 p.m. local time), roughly the moment Earth\u2019s rotation carries the pad into the plane of the station\u2019s orbit.<\/p>\n

If all goes well, Prokopyev will oversee an automated two-day rendezvous with the space station, docking at the Rassvet module around 9:07 a.m. Friday. Standing by to welcome them aboard will be Expedition 56 commander Drew Feustel, Ricky Arnold and cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev, commander of the Soyuz MS-08\/54S ferry ship that carried them into orbit March 21.<\/p>\n

Feustel, Arnold and Artemyev have had the station to themselves since early Sunday when three other crew members \u2014 Soyuz MS-07\/53S commander Anton Shkaplerov, flight engineer Scott Tingle and Japanese astronaut Norishige Kanai undocked and returned to Earth to wrap up a 168-day mission.<\/p>\n

The rapid-fire crew rotation will enable the station crew to maintain a busy research schedule amid ongoing work to prepare for an upcoming spacewalk and the arrival of two cargo ships in the next several weeks.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The Soyuz-FG booster set to launch with Prokopyev, Gerst and Au\u00f1\u00f3n-Chancellor rolled to its launch pad in Kazakhstan on Monday. Credit: Energia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Prokopyev and Au\u00f1\u00f3n-Chancellor are making their first spaceflight while Gerst will be making his second visit to the space station after a 165-day stay in 2014.<\/p>\n

Au\u00f1\u00f3n-Chancellor, a veteran flight surgeon, originally was assigned to a later mission, but she was moved up to the Soyuz MS-09 crew after astronaut Jeanette Epps, one of the original crew members, was unexpectedly bumped from the Prokopyev-Gerst crew in January.<\/p>\n

Citing privacy issues, NASA provided no explanation, Epps had no public comment and Au\u00f1\u00f3n-Chancellor would only say she looked forward to visiting the space station and carrying out a full slate of research.<\/p>\n

\u201cI certainly didn\u2019t take part in any of those decisions, (they were) way above my head,\u201d she said. \u201cWe know this is a dynamic business, and so they told me to prepare and train and get ready for this mission so I said OK, that\u2019s my job, that\u2019s what I\u2019m going to do. And that\u2019s what I\u2019m focusing on.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said the accelerated training schedule went smoothly, crediting Gerst with helping her complete the full schedule of emergency drills.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to make sure we practiced certain emergency scenarios together as a crew and get the same number of hours that we would have otherwise,\u201d she said. \u201cSo Alex volunteered his time in Russia to stay a little bit longer and make sure that those drills got done correctly with the right amount of time, and we weren\u2019t rushed. But other than that, in all honesty, it really has been smooth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before her selection as an astronaut in 2009, Au\u00f1\u00f3n-Chancellor spent more than nine months in Star City near Moscow supporting medical operations with space station crew members and participated in water survival training in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

After joining the astronaut corps, she pent two months in Antarctica searching for meteorites as part of a scientific expedition and later served as an aquanaut aboard the Aquarius underwater laboratory. She said her time in Antarctica was particularly valuable.<\/p>\n

\u201cAntarctica was fantastic because when I was there I felt like I was not on this planet,\u201d she said. \u201cYou really feel like you are more isolated in Antarctica than you are on space station. On space station, you can call your family, you can get news uploaded to you, you\u2019re very well connected. And down there in Antarctica, you don\u2019t feel connected to anything. You learn what\u2019s important to you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION NASA astronaut Serena Au\u00f1\u00f3n-Chancellor, Russian Soyuz commander Sergey Prokopyev, and German flight engineer Alexander Gerst are set for launch Wednesday. Credit: NASA\/GCTC With three space station fliers safely back on Earth after a pinpoint landing Sunday, three fresh crew members made final preparations for launch Wednesday from Kazakhstan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2799,1601,831,2800,2801,1545,717,1771],"class_list":["post-13755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-alexander-gerst","tag-baikonur-cosmodrome","tag-european-space-agency","tag-expedition-56","tag-expedition-57","tag-human-spaceflight","tag-international-space-station","tag-kazakhstan"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13755"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13755\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}