Eleven crew members are living aboard the International Space Station with four spaceships now docked to the orbiting lab. A fifth spaceship launched the morning of May 24 and was scheduled to arrive a few hours later with cargo to replenish the Expedition 69 crew.
Two SpaceX Dragon crew ships are docked adjacent to each other on the station’s Harmony module after the arrival of Axiom Mission-2 (Ax-2) aboard Dragon Freedom on May 22. The four private astronauts from Axiom Space opened Freedom’s hatch and entered the station beginning eight days of docked operations.
The private quartet consisting of commander Peggy Whitson, pilot John Shoffner, and mission specialists Al Alqarni and Rayyanah Barnawi spent May 23 getting familiar with station operations. They practiced preparing food and drinks, conducting hygiene practices, performing safety procedures, and operating lab equipment while getting used to living in space.
At the end of the day, the foursome joined the seven-member Expedition 69 crew and reviewed roles and responsibilities in the unlikely event of an emergency. The international crew of 11 located safety gear such as fire extinguishers and portable breathing gear, followed escape routes, and coordinated communications with mission controllers in response to fire, ammonia leak, or pressure leak events.
In the middle of the new crew adaptation activities, there was still time for ongoing space science and lab maintenance activities. NASA flight engineer Frank Rubio serviced a variety of components and swapped samples inside a research furnace and a fluorescence microscope. NASA flight engineer Woody Hoburg configured gear supporting a pharmaceutical study, while UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi set up the Stellar Stem Cells experiment, an Ax-2 investigation, that will explore regenerative medicine therapies.
NASA flight engineer Stephen Bowen spent his day with the Ax-2 crew and joined Commander Whitson transferring emergency gear and configuring safety hardware between Dragon Freedom and the space station. Bowen and former NASA astronaut Whitson are both Dragon crew ship commanders, with Bowen leading the SpaceX Crew-6 mission aboard the Dragon Endeavour spacecraft.
The uncrewed Roscosmos Progress 84 launched at 7:56 a.m. CDT on May 24 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on a resupply mission to the space station. Progress will deliver about three tons of food, fuel, and supplies to the space station.
Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.