Cape Canaveral, Florida – A new crew blasted toward the International Space Station on Friday to replace astronauts who returned to Earth early for NASA’s first medical evacuation.
SpaceX launched the replacements as soon as possible at NASA’s request, sending American, French and Russian astronauts on an expected eight- to nine-month mission extending into the fall. The four are scheduled to arrive at the orbiting laboratory on Saturday, filling vacancies left by their colleagues who evacuated last month, and returning the space station to its full staff.
“Friday the 13th turns out to be a very lucky day,” SpaceX Launch Control said over the radio once the astronauts reached orbit. “That was an amazing trip,” said crew leader Jessica Meir.
NASA was forced to suspend spacewalks and postpone other missions awaiting the arrival of Americans Meir and Jack Hathaway, Frenchman Sophie Adino, and Russian Andrei Fedyev. They will join three other astronauts — one American and two from Russia — who have kept the space station running for the past month.
Satisfied with the medical procedures already in place, NASA requested that no additional crew examinations be performed prior to liftoff and no new diagnostic equipment was prepared. The ultrasound machine already in place for research went into full gear on January 7 when used on a sick crew member. NASA did not reveal the identity of the sick astronaut or his health problem. The four returning astronauts went straight to the hospital after falling into the Pacific Ocean near San Diego.
This was the first time in 65 years of human spaceflight that NASA canceled a mission for medical reasons.
As missions increase in length, NASA is constantly looking for updates to the space station’s medical equipment, said Dina Kontila, deputy program administrator. “But there are a lot of things that are impractical, so you need to bring astronauts home from space,” she said earlier this week.
In preparation for missions to the Moon and Mars where health care will be more difficult, the new arrivals will test a filter designed to turn drinking water into an emergency intravenous fluid, try out an ultrasound system that relies on artificial intelligence and augmented reality instead of experts on Earth, and perform ultrasound scans of their jugular veins in a blood clot study.
They will also demonstrate their moon landing skills in a simulated test.
Adino is the second French woman to go into space. She was 14 years old when Claudie Hainer flew to the Russian Mir space station in 1996, inspiring her to become an astronaut. Haignere welcomed her from the launch site in Florida, wishing her “Bon vol,” French for “bon voyage,” and “Ad astra,” Latin for “to the stars.”
“I thought it would have been a quiet joy and pride for Sophie, but it was very emotional to see her have a successful launch,” Heinery said.
Hathaway, like Adinot, is new to space, while Meir and Fedyev are on their second trip to the station. Just before liftoff, Fedyaev led the crew in a cry of “Boykhaly” – Russian for “let’s go” – the word uttered at liftoff by the world’s first person in space, Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union, in 1961.
On her first mission in 2019, Meir participated in the first all-female spacewalk. The other half of that spacewalk, Christina Koch, is among the four Artemis II astronauts waiting to fly around the moon as early as March. A ship-to-ship radio link between the two crews was planned.
Meir wasn’t sure that astronauts would return to the moon during her career. “We are now here on the verge of the Artemis 2 mission,” she said before takeoff. “The fact that they’ll be in space at the same time as us…it’s great to be an astronaut now, it’s very exciting.”
SpaceX has launched the newest crew from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Elon Musk’s company is preparing a launch pad adjacent to Kennedy Space Center for the super-sized spacecraft that NASA needs to land astronauts on the moon.
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