Astronaut Breaks NASA Record as New Trio Preps for Launch to Space Station

This view of Earth was captured from a window on the SpaceX Dragon Endurance spacecraft as it approached the International Space Station. Pictured below is the Strait of Gibraltar that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea, which separates the continents of Europe and Africa. Credit: NASA

The seven Expedition 69 crew members enjoyed an off-duty day on Monday, September 11, aboard the International Space Station (ISS). They will be welcoming three new crewmates at the end of the week when they launch and dock to the orbital outpost.

Upcoming Launch and New Crew Arrival

Three future station crew members are at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan counting down to their lift-off aboard the Soyuz MS-24 crew ship planned for 11:44 a.m. EDT on Friday. The trio, consisting of NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara and Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub, will dock to the Rassvet module just over three hours later at 2:56 p.m. First-time space-flyers O’Hara and Chub along with Kononenko, who is making a record fifth trip to the space station, will orbit Earth on the station for six months conducting advanced space research.

NASA astronaut and Expedition 69 Flight Engineer Frank Rubio works in the Microgravity Science Glovebox swapping graphene aerogel samples for a space manufacturing study. The physics investigation seeks to produce a superior, uniform material structure benefitting power storage, environmental protection, and chemical sensing. Credit: NASA

Current Crew and Milestones

The current Expedition 69 crew comprises two separate crews, one of which has been aboard the space station for nearly a year and the other which has been on the station since August 27. The longest-serving crew, with Commander Sergey Prokopyev and Flight Engineers Dmitri Petelin and Frank Rubio, will depart at the end of the month after living in space for just over a year in space.

Latest Additions to the Crew

Today, Rubio surpassed NASA’s single spaceflight record of 355 continuous days in space made by astronaut Mark Vande Hei on March 30, 2022. At 11 a.m. on Tuesday, NASA TV will broadcast a pre-recorded space-to-ground conversation Vande Hei had with Rubio on September 5 when he congratulated the orbiting astronaut for his record-breaking mission.

The station’s newest crew is in its third week of a six-month-long space mission. The quartet consists of first-time space flyers NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli and Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov, as well as two-time station visitors Satoshi Furukawa of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Andreas Mogensen of ESA (European Space Agency). They will stay in space conducting a variety of microgravity science experiments benefitting humans living on and off the Earth until late February.