walking alone
After these astronauts departed on January 15, only one NASA astronaut, Chris Williams, remained in orbit. He reached space in November aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft along with two Russian cosmonauts, Sergei Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev. The space station is a large place, and with most of the facilities now more than two decades old, Williams had to spend most of his time on maintenance and monitoring activities.
Back on Earth, NASA and SpaceX engineers were also busy. Because Crew 11 was brought home more than a month early, NASA and SpaceX scrambled to launch the Crew-12 vehicle slightly earlier than expected, to reduce the time it would take for Williams to manage the large American segment of the station on her own.
Expedition 74 welcomes NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 members to the International Space Station. Front from left are Andrey Fadeyev of Roscosmos; Jack Hathaway and Jessica Meir, both from NASA; and Sophie Adenot from ESA (European Space Agency). Behind are Sergei Kud-Sverchkov of Roscosmos, Chris Williams of NASA and Sergei Mikaev of Roscosmos.
Expedition 74 welcomes NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 members to the International Space Station. Front from left are Andrey Fadeyev of Roscosmos; Jack Hathaway and Jessica Meir, both from NASA; and Sophie Adenot from ESA (European Space Agency). Behind are Sergei Kud-Sverchkov of Roscosmos, Chris Williams of NASA and Sergei Mikaev of Roscosmos.
This culminated with a successful Dragon launch early Friday, with reinforcements arriving at the space station on Saturday evening.
“This mission has demonstrated in many ways what it means to be mission-focused at NASA,” said space agency Administrator Jared Isaacman during a press conference after the launch. “Over the past few weeks we brought Crew 11 home early, we moved Crew 12 forward, while simultaneously preparing for launch for the Artemis II mission. This is only possible because of the incredibly talented workforce we have across NASA, along with our contractors and our commercial and international partners.”
<a href