Two days after A rare launch aborted at the last secondA Russian Soyuz spacecraft took off on a flight to the International Space Station on Saturday, carrying two short-term crew members and a NASA astronaut on a six-month mission.
Soyuz MS-25/71S commander Oleg Novitskiy, Belarusian guest cosmonaut Marina Vasilevskaya and NASA veteran Tracy Dyson thundered away from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 8:36 a.m. EDT (5:36 p.m. local time), slipping into orbit eight minutes and 45 seconds later.
The launch was originally scheduled for last Thursday, but the countdown was cut short within 20 seconds when computers detected low voltage readings in the electrical system of the Soyuz 2.1a rocket’s first stage.
It was the first time a Soyuz rocket had been aborted in such a way, and it took Russian engineers a day to review the telemetry, pinpoint the problem and replace suspect batteries. Subsequent tests showed that all systems were ready for a second launch attempt on Saturday.
As the Soyuz countdown ticked toward a late afternoon launch in Kazakhstan, a SpaceX Dragon freighter launched Thursday from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station overtook the space station and departed for docking at 7:19 a.m. local time, with 6,200 pounds on board. scientific equipment, spare parts and crew supplies for the laboratory complex, including fresh food and coffee kits.
The Soyuz is expected to catch up with the space station on Monday and dock at a port on the station’s Earth-facing Prichal module at 11:09 a.m. local time.
Station Commander Oleg Kononenko, cosmonauts, is ready to welcome them on board Nikolaj Chub and Alexander Grebenkin and NASA astronauts Loral O’Hara, Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Eps.
Vasilevskaya, an accomplished ballroom dancer and flight attendant for Belavia Airlines, is the first citizen of Belarus, a close ally of Russia, to fly in space since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
She was selected as a “spaceflight participant” in a nationwide competition and will conduct research for scientists in Belarus as part of a program known as the Belarusian Woman in Space.
Dyson is making her third space flight and her second aboard a Soyuz. Despite the political tensions between the United States and Russia, the crew seems to be getting along well.
“It was a real pleasure working with Marina,” said Dyson. “She has a fantastic attitude, and that’s a common thing when you’re working together with emergency masks on your face in dire conditions and trying to go through the (emergency training) procedures. It was a real pleasure to work with her.”
Kononenko, Chub and O’Hara were launched to the station last September 15 aboard the Soyuz MS-24/70S spacecraft. Dominick, Barratt, Epps and Grebenkin launched on March 3 aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon ferry. Known as Crew 8, they replaced four other Crew Dragon flyers – Crew 7 – which returned to Earth after a brief transfer on March 12.
Novitskiy and Vasilevskaya plan to spend twelve days aboard the space station. O’Hara will replace Dyson for the trip home and the trio will return to Earth on April 6 aboard the Soyuz MS-24/70S spacecraft that carried O’Hara, Kononenko and Chub into orbit last September .
Kononenko and Chub are halfway through a planned year-long stay aboard the station. If all goes well, they will return to Earth together with Dyson next September, using the Soyuz MS-25/71S ferry ship delivered by Novitskiy’s crew.
With O’Hara’s return, five of the station’s seven full-time crew members will have been replaced, completing the final round of crew rotations.
Dyson first flew aboard the space shuttle Endeavor for a 13-day visit to the space station in 2007. Three years later, she flew aboard a Soyuz spacecraft as a long-term station crew member, serving between April and the end of 176 spent days aboard the outpost. from September 2010.
During that flight, a now-famous photo of Dyson captured her staring at the blue-and-white Earth in the darkness of space, as seen from the laboratory’s multi-window Cupola compartment.
In an interview with CBS News, she said she now knows what to expect and “this time I’m just going to see how I can help the others.”
“Part of the beauty of living aboard is being part of a crew and a team and helping each other,” she said. “So if I have some free time and the rest of my comrades are working, I will definitely try to lend a hand where I can. But when we all have some free time, I really look forward to that view out the window.
“I have such a great memory (of the experience) and that dome shot certainly captures that, of looking at the Earth. And that never gets old.”
The training needed to get there is another matter, she said.
“That’s the hardest part of what we do: the training, where we have to be away from home for long periods of time,” she said. “When I did this on my first two flights, it wasn’t that bad because I was basically home alone. I had a dog that others wanted to care for. My husband was deployed on a ship.”
“But now it’s a little different, and I have a lot of support from my family, who remind me again and again that I’m doing this for them as much as for myself.”
She will have a very busy six months in space.
Boeing’s Starliner ferry, a NASA-sponsored alternative to SpaceX’s already proven Crew Dragon, is expected to take off for its first piloted test flight in early May, carrying NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams to the space station for a shakedown flight.
If the flight goes well, the Starliner will be certified for use in future ISS crew rotation missions, alternating with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and giving NASA redundancy when it comes to launching astronauts to and from the space station.
“Today, all of our Crew Dragons (SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets) are launching,” said space station program manager Dana Weigel. “For example, if there was a problem with the F9 and we had to stop for a while… if we had another vehicle we could keep flying.”
And that would ensure that there is always one or more American astronauts on board the space station.
“So that’s why it’s so important for us to have that ongoing capacity when we’re talking about multiple providers,” Weigel said.
In June, NASA plans three spacewalks, or EVAs, to perform a variety of tasks, including work to prepare for the addition of a final set of deployable solar panel blankets.
No astronauts have been assigned to the excursions yet, but Dyson is a spacewalk veteran and her experience could prompt NASA to send her out again.
“We have three EVAs planned for our expansion, and I am one of the spacewalkers trained to perform those EVAs,” she said. “We’ll see how they all turn out and who goes out and who stays in to make them all eligible.”
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