The next four souls who will fly to the International Space Station touched down in Florida on a sweltering and humid Saturday afternoon.
Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, was first off the NASA Gulfstream jet, followed by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), NASA astronaut Mike Fincke and NASA astronaut Zena Cardman. The SpaceX Crew-11 mission is led by Cardman who will be making her first trip to the ISS.
“Landing here at the Shuttle Landing Facility, for me personally as a first time flier, this is the first moment that it’s really starting to feel real,” Cardman said. “This is the beginning of a week when things feel progressively more real as we approach our launch, currently slated for the 31st.”
A day before the crew arrived, SpaceX, NASA and its international partners held a multi-hour flight readiness review meeting and polled ‘go’ to proceed towards the flight from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Thursday. Liftoff is scheduled for 12:09 p.m. EDT (1609 UTC).
The Falcon 9 rocket will roll out to the pad over the weekend ahead of a launch day rehearsal on Monday, which is also referred to as a dry dress. That will be followed hours later by a short, static burn of the rocket’s nine Merlin engines to verify that the rocket is in good health.
The quartet who make up the SpaceX Crew-11 mission continue the tradition of blending extensive spaceflight experience with first-time fliers. Platonov, one of the mission specialists, is also a first-time flier, while Fincke and Yui are flying to space for a fourth and second time respectively.
“I’ve been on different crews before, but this one is exceptional,” said Fincke, the pilot for Crew-11. “I’m personally looking forward to going back up to the space station. I helped build it and now, I’m getting to see it in its full maturity with six other crewmates.”
Both Fincke and Yui were previously training to fly as members of the Starliner-1 mission, the first operational flight of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft. Fincke originally trained as the pilot for the Starliner Crew Flight Test before eventually shifting to become the planned pilot of Starliner-1.
Yui would’ve flown as a mission specialist on Starliner-1, but was never formally announced by either NASA or JAXA. But with delays to that side of the Commercial Crew Program, NASA and JAXA opted to put the duo on the Crew-11 flight instead.
Since NASA is hoping that Starliner will conduct its next flight in early 2026, most likely in an uncrewed configuration, Fincke said he’s optimistic that he may see the capsule dock with the ISS while they’re onboard. He has been involved with the CCP since its inception in 2014.
“It’s really a privilege and honor to know so many different spacecraft and I’m very proud of our American industry partners for building some really fine, space-flying machines,” Fincke said. “I’m really excited about Dragon Endeavour. Who could imagine we were going to fly them six times or even more?”
Yui will have the rare opportunity to meet a fellow JAXA astronaut on orbit once Endeavour docks to the ISS. Takuya Onishi flew to the orbiting outpost as part of the Crew-10 mission and was also part of Yui’s astronaut class, which was selected in 2009.
“Onishi-san, he’s my best friend. It’s a very rare opportunity to see my friends in orbit,” Yui said. “And of course, I just want to do a lot of interesting experiments on orbit. I also just want to work with other people, not only in Japan, but all over the world and I’m looking forward to a lot of fruitful results.”
Once Crew-11 docks with the International Space Station, they will conduct a brief handover period with Crew-10 before the latter departs to return to Earth. Crew-11 is scheduled to perform a six-month mission onboard the ISS, but that could be extended out to eight months to match changes underway on Roscosmos’ flight schedule with its Soyuz spacecraft.
A final decision on the length of Crew-11 will be made about a month after they dock. They will be onboard when the station marks its 25th year of continuous crew activity, which is coming up in the Fall.
“We have the privilege of flying with people that have flown before and seen the International Space Station growing from its very beginning,” Cardman said. “It will be our honor to join Expedition 73 onboard the International Space Station and to be there for the 25 anniversary of the ISS. It’s so special to take part in something as grand as this human spaceflight endeavor.”
