by Although the commercial Polaris Dawn crew destined for the first non-governmental spacewalk, a NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts embarked on a more conventional space flight on Wednesday, heading to the International Space Station aboard a Soyuz ferry for a six-month tour of duty.
Former Space Station man Donald Pettit, NASA’s oldest active astronaut at 69, Soyuz MS-26/72S commander Aleksey Ovchinin and cosmonaut Ivan Vagner blasted off the top of the Soyuz 2.1a rocket at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 9:23 p.m. local time.
The climb to orbit went smoothly, and nine minutes after liftoff, the Soyuz was released to fly on its own.
The launch increased the total number of people in orbit at one time to a record 19, flying on four different spacecraft: nine aboard the space station, four aboard the Polaris Dawn Crew Dragon, three aboard the Chinese space station and three aboard the Soyuz.
This will be Pettit’s fourth spaceflight since his first visit to the station in 2002-03, and his first launch in 12 years.
The most “profound” change he has noticed since his last flight is “the number of people flying in space now, partly because of our international partners, partly because of the now we have commercial providers and then the private astronauts,” he told an interviewer before the launch.
“I think space is a hoping place right now,” he said. “It’s starting to open up like the wild west, and I think we’re going to see an incredible expansion of people living and working in an orbital environment.”
The private funding Polaris dawn flightchartered by billionaire Jared Isaacman, launched from the Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday and has already set a new post-Apollo altitude record for a piloted spacecraft.
Overnight, Isaacman and colleague Sarah Gillis, a SpaceX crew trainer, plan to conduct the first non-government walk, the first such commercial trip in the vacuum of space on more than 470 government-sponsored spacewalks to date.
The Soyuz launch was timed to establish a two-orbit, three-hour fix with the International Space Station and dock at the Earth-facing Rassvet module at 3:33 local time.
Standing by to welcome the new crew on board will be the Soyuz crew who will replace them, commander Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub and NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson, as well as NASA Crew 8 aircraft – commander Matthew Dominick, Mike Barratt, Jeanette Epps and cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin.
Also on board: Starliner commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore and pilot Sunita Williams, now more than three months into an unexpected eight-and-a-half-month wait.
They originally planned a short eight-day visit to the station during a test flight of the Boeing Starliner spacecraft. But helium leaks and thruster problems prompted NASA to bring the Starliner back to Earth early on Saturday without his crew. Wilmore and Williams will now come home in February aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon ferry.
True to form, Pettit offered a deadpan answer to a reporter who asked what he looked at most after reaching the space station.
“After we’ve opened the essays and given all our congratulatory hugs to our crewmates, I’m probably going to make a beeline straight for the toilet,” he said. “Then the (multi-window) cupola.”
Kononenko and Chub were joined by NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara launched aboard another Soyuz on September 15, 2023. O’Hara spent six months on board the station and returned to Earth with two other cosmonauts last Aprilleaving Kononenko and Chub behind on the station to complete a year-long mission.
Dyson flew up to the station in March to replace O’Hara and will join Kononenko and Chub aboard the same spacecraft when they return to Earth on September 23. a new record for the most cumulative time span.
Pettit, who has a doctorate in chemical engineering, is a three-flight veteran with a total of 370 days in space. He last flew aboard the space station in 2011-2012, and became popular with his “Saturday morning Science” experiments that demonstrated unusual aspects of MacGyver’s weightlessness and intelligence.
Among his most popular exhibits: an open, collapsible plastic container he invented for drinking coffee in the absence of gravity. Their makeshift “cup” relied on a specific shape and surface tension to hold the coffee in the container while funneling the liquid to the rim for sipping.
“Maybe this is what future space colonists use when they want to celebrate and toast, they can sip their coffee and tea out of cups like this, like we do here on the Earth, without dragging. they’re out of a bag,” he said 15 years ago on NASA TV. The YouTube video has been viewed 3 million times.
In the 12 years since his last flight, Pettit mentored younger astronauts and helped plan for NASA’s Artemis moon program. But he never lost the desire to fly aboard the space station again.
“I miss being up in space every day,” he told an interviewer before the launch. “I feel like a cowboy who should be out on the range riding the horse and instead, I’m flying a desk. It’s nice to get back on the horse and go out on the range again.”
Pettit focuses professionally on space station research but is an accomplished amateur astronomer and photographer looking forward to working with new lenses that can capture high-resolution nighttime views of Earth, cities and other interesting targets.
“One of my specialties is images at night,” he said. “The night Earth is very special to me. I’m an amateur astronomer, and … it’s not just looking at the Earth, it’s looking at the Earth, the sky, the atmosphere at the edge, and the all natural phenomenology that occurs from the perspective of being in orbit.
“And I’m really looking forward to advancing the night imagery. I’ve talked to NASA about flying some new lenses that are highly optimized for night imagery, and they’ve just arrived on the station . So I’m looking forward to putting them to use at night.”
The arrival of Pettit, Ovchinin and Vagner is the first step in a carefully orchestrated series of launches and landings twice a year to replace the space station’s seven long-time crew members.
Kononenko, Chub and Dyson will disband and return to Earth on September 23. The next day, NASA and SpaceX plan to send another Crew Dragon carrying astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov to the station.
The Crew Dragon normally carries four long-duration station flyers, but NASA removed two astronauts — Stephanie Wilson and Zena Cardman — from the Crew 9 mission to free up seats for Wilmore and Williams to use when they return to Earth with Hague and Gorbunov in late February.
Meanwhile, Dominick, Barratt, Epps and Grebenkin, who plan to return to Earth around October 1st, will be replaced by Hague, Wilmore, Williams and Gorbunov.
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