Crew-7 begins its six-month stay in space, lifting off from Florida

Early Saturday morning a crew of four astronauts from around the globe lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on a SpaceX Falcon 9 for a six-month stay on the International Space Station. The crew is currently in transit to the ISS, and expecting to arrive Sunday morning.

SpaceX Crew-7 lift offs from LC-39A

At 3:27 A.M. ET SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from LC-39A with a crew of four onboard. Crew-7’s destination would be the ISS to relieve the Crew-6 astronauts who have been in orbit since March. This was SpaceX’s third crewed spaceflight of 2023, eighth for NASA, and 11th overall.

For overall launches, this was SpaceX’s 59th launch for 2023, the 55th Falcon 9.

The crew for Crew-7 is a little more unique than previous missions on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon. Each of the four astronauts come from a different country and space agency. Here’s a list of the four latest space travelers on Crew-7:

• Jasmin Moghbeli, NASA (Commander)
• Andreas Mogensen, ESA (Pilot)
• Satoshi Furukawa, JAXA (Mission Specialist)
• Konstantin Borisov, Roscosmos (Mission Specialist)

This is a first for SpaceX to fly four astronauts so diverse, spanning almost the entire globe. Another first for SpaceX is ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen who serves as the first non-American pilot of the Crew Dragon spacecraft. Having international pilots of US spacecraft isn’t new, several Space Shuttle missions featured pilots, and even commanders, from other nations, but this is a first for SpaceX.

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Crew Dragon arrival set for Sunday morning

Once the crew arrive at the station they will go through a handover period with Crew-6 to get familiar with their new living arrangements. After usually one to two weeks Crew-6 will pack up their spacecraft and return home, completing its mission on the orbiting laboratory.

With the successful launch of Crew-7, the next step on its journey will be arriving at the ISS. Arrival is set to finish at 10:33 A.M. ET with a hatch opening to Dragon. Then a formal welcome ceremony will be performed with all the members currently staying at the station before getting right into work.

Crew-7 will dock on the space-facing side of the Harmony module, one of two ports available to spacecraft equipped with the International Docking Adaptor or IDA. The IDA was developed to be used as an international standard for docking spacecraft to stations and is currently being used by SpaceX on the Crew Dragon and Dragon 2, by Boeing’s Starliner vehicle, and by Sierra Space’s Dreamchaser spaceplane.

Right now only the two vehicles from SpaceX are operational. With only the two ports, when all four vehicles become online, scheduling might become even harder than it already is.