Soyuz MS-16 brings three new crew members to ISS
/In the first human spaceflight launch of 2020, two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut were sent to the International Space Station to begin a six-month stay in space.
Flying in their Soyuz MS-16 spacecraft, cosmonauts Anatoli Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner, as well as astronaut Chris Cassidy, took about six hours to reach the orbiting outpost to meet the three Expedition 62 crew members already aboard the ISS.
“Chris and Anatoli, congrats on your third successful arrival at the International Space Station, and a special congrats to Ivan on his first,” NASA capsule communicator Jessica Watkins radioed to the crew during a post-arrival welcome ceremony. “For Chris, it was a stunning launch and docking, and while we had everyone to see you off from Baikonur, we know your family and friends, and your NASA family, were watching the whole way and couldn’t be more proud.”
The reason crew and family weren’t able to watch the launch in person were because of extra restrictions due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. Additionally, various pre-launch traditions were canceled in order to limit the amount of people around the crew during their typical multi-week quarantine before liftoff.
Soyuz MS-16 launched atop a Soyuz 2.1a rocket at 8:05 UTC April 9, 2020, from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. Getting into orbit only took about nine minutes. However, the spacecraft was on a speedy four-orbit rendezvous flight path, which allowed the trio to dock with the Poisk module of the ISS at 14:13 UTC.
After a couple hours of leak checks between the ISS and Soyuz, the hatch was open at about 16:28 UTC. The Soyuz MS-16 trio then joined the in-progress Expedition 62 crew, which includes NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Drew Morgan as well as Russian cosmonaut, and ISS commander, Oleg Skripochka.
Following a brief moment of initial greetings in the Poisk module, the now six-person crew ventured to the Zvezda service module to begin a welcome ceremony where the new trio were able to talk to their friends and family via a radio conference.
This is Ivanishin’s third spaceflight and Vagner’s first. Meanwhile it is Cassidy’s third time in orbit.
Ivanishin’s first two flights were during the Expedition 29/30 increment between November 2011 and April 2012 and the Expedition 48/49 increment between July and October of 2016.
Cassidy first flew into space during the space shuttle Endeavour’s STS-127 ISS construction mission in July 2009, which brought the Japanese Kibo module exposed facility to the outpost. His next flight occurred between March and September 2013 as part of the Expedition 35/36 crew increment.
Originally, the Soyuz MS-16 flight was to have cosmonauts Nikolai Tikhonov and Andrei Babkin. However, on Feb. 19, 2020, Roscosmos announced they would be replaced by their backups for medical reasons.
“It was unexpected for us,” Ivanishin said during the welcome ceremony. “We didn’t know we were going to be here. We started preparing, we were training and everything worked out well.”
The expanded crew is only expected to last for about a week as Skripochka, Meir and Morgan are expected to return to Earth in their Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft on April 17. Upon their undocking, Expedition 63 will officially begin with Cassidy as its commander.
While Expedition 63 is only expected to have three people until about October, which is when the next crew rotation is scheduled to occur, NASA and SpaceX are planning to launch the first crewed test mission for the Dragon 2 spacecraft as early as the second half of May.
The Demo-2 Dragon mission is slated to involve NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken. While they are currently expected to remain at the ISS for about a week, it is possible the crew could get an extended stay up to a couple months.
This would allow the ISS crew to do several critical items, such as spacewalks to install the last set of lithium-ion batteries on the outpost’s truss, which are slated to launch on the Kounotori 9 mission, also in May.
