The SpaceX Crew-3 team, consisting of NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Kayla Barron, and Tom Marshburn, and ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer, and support personnel participate in water survival training at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in this image from April 2021. The mission is slated to launch in late 2021.
When Barron, Chari, Marshburn, and Maurer arrive at the orbiting laboratory, they will become expedition crew members for the duration of their six-month science mission. The crew will have a slight overlap with the Crew-2 astronauts, who arrived April 24. This will mark the second time commercial crew missions have overlapped on the station. The Crew-1 astronauts, who ended their mission with a splashdown off the coast of Panama City, Florida, on Sunday, May 2, were aboard the station with the Crew-2 astronauts for a seven-day direct crew handover. Increasing the total number of astronauts aboard the station enables the agency to boost the number of science investigations conducted in the unique microgravity environment.
Image Credit: NASA