The new SpaceX Dragon capsule Freedom, carrying the Crew-4 astronauts, launched Apr. 27 at 3:52 a.m. EST from NASA's Kennedy Space Center's historic Launch Pad 39A atop a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket.
The Dragon and its four passengers, Astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Robert Hines, Jessica Watkins as well as Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency, are expected to dock with the ISS at 8:15 p.m., Apr. 28.
"It's unbelievable this is our fourth crew rotation flight," Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston's Commercial Crew Program," said in a statement. "It was fantastic to see the crew enter. They seemed genuinely excited to get on their flight."
NASA's Thomas Marshburn, Kayla Barron, Raja Chari, ESA's Matthias Maurer, and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveev, and Sergey Korsakov will join the Crew-4 team on the ISS. Watkins is the very first Black woman to fly a long-duration mission to the station, and she is making history.
Crew-4 astronauts will perform groundbreaking science studies in fields like materials research, health technologies, and plant science in order to prepare for human exploration much further than low-Earth orbit and to stand to gain life on Earth.
Studies on immune system aging, organic material concrete alternatives, and cardiovascular and respiratory effects during and after long-duration microgravity exposure will be among the studies. These are all just a few of more than 200 scientific experiments and technology demonstrations they'll be doing throughout their expedition.
An investigation into restoring significant vision to people suffering from retinal degenerative diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration is launching alongside the crew in the Dragon capsule.
The Protein-Based Artificial Retina Manufacturing experiment investigates how synthetic retinas or retinal implantable devices are made in low gravity, where their development is predicted to be improved.
NASA's Commercial Crew Program's Crew-4 mission is the agency's fourth crew rotation mission with SpaceX. Lindgren and Cristoforetti have previously visited the International Space Station, while Hines and Watkins will be making their first trip.
NASA's Thomas Marshburn, Kayla Barron, and Raja Chari, ESA's Matthias Maurer, and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveev, and Sergey Korsakov are among the seven astronauts already aboard the ISS.
However, the population of the orbiting lab will soon decline again. Marshburn, Barron, Chari, and Maurer, the astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-3 mission, which launched in November, are set to return to Earth in their own Dragon on May 4 or thereabouts.
