A new Progress cargo ship lifted off for the International Space Station (ISS) this week, while the four astronauts assigned to the next crew rotation, including Canada’s Joshua Kutryk, began the final quarantine before their own flight.
The uncrewed Progress 96 spacecraft, carrying about three tons of food, fuel and supplies for the Expedition 75 crew, launched on a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Sept. 16, NASA reported in its mission blog.
NASA and SpaceX said this week they are now targeting early October for the Crew-13 launch, which will carry Kutryk and three crewmates to the station. The four astronauts entered quarantine Sept. 17 at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, the standard pre-flight isolation meant to keep a crew healthy ahead of liftoff.
Kutryk will fly alongside NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. NASA’s Sept. 17 mission update said the crew completed equipment interface testing at Cape Canaveral before quarantine began, checking spacesuit fit, verifying their seats aboard the Dragon spacecraft and running communications tests. Once launched, Kutryk will join Expedition 75 for a six-month stay aboard the station.
Science and technology experiments
Aboard the station, the Expedition 75 crew kept up a full research schedule while preparing for Progress 96’s arrival.
NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Sophie Adenot spent part of the week on a bioprinting experiment, processing cartilage cell samples in the MERLIN research incubator before loading them into the Auxilium bioprinter in the Kibo laboratory module’s Life Science Glovebox — work aimed at eventually growing higher-quality tissue for personalized implants using a patient’s own cells, NASA said in its Sept. 15 blog post. Flight engineer Anil Menon, meanwhile, soldered components onto a circuit board using a lead-free technique for the MIYOKA experiment, testing whether electronics can be safely repaired in microgravity — research that could someday reduce how often future Moon and Mars missions need resupply.
Meir and, on a separate day, Adenot each completed sessions for RelaxPro, a study of whether mindfulness and relaxing audio can ease astronaut stress and improve sleep. Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina tested a virtual-reality system called Teledroid for remotely operating station robots, and separately practised with the Zvezda module’s TORU remote-docking system — a rehearsal, NASA’s Sept. 17 recap noted, for Progress 96’s automated approach.
Commander Jessica Meir and flight engineer Jack Hathaway also spent time this week cleaning and inspecting spacesuits after four spacewalks this summer. “I felt like I was just there levitating above the Earth,” Meir said of the experience.
Replay: Progress 96 launches to the station
Looking ahead
Progress 96 is due to dock at the Poisk module at 9:46 a.m. on Sept. 19, then remain berthed for about five months before its own eventual, destructive re-entry. NASA and SpaceX now target early October for the Crew-13 launch, though no specific date has been set.