Spacesuit checked: NASA’s Crew-12 astronauts wrap up 8-month stay ahead of departure from ISS

Four astronauts of NASA’s Crew-12 are making final preparations aboard the International Space Station (ISS) before their scheduled return in October. Launched in February, the astronauts will return a few days after the arrival of Crew-13 that is slated to liftoff atop SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket on October 1 from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. As part of the preparations, Crew-12 is testing their spacesuits they will wear on their way back home and wrapping up the science experiments which they will handover to Crew-13. 

On Sunday, NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, commander of Crew-12 and the ISS, shared a group photo on X with her fellow members of the mandatory spacesuit tests completed recently. “Homeward bound. This week we donned our SpaceX suits to ensure a good fit - it has been almost 8 months since we’ve worn them!  We’ve had an amazing time on-board the International space Station, but after Crew-13 arrives, it will be time for us to depart. Stay tuned!” Meir captioned the photo featuring Crew-12 pilot Jack Hathaway and mission specialists Andrey Fedyaev and Sophie Adenot.

In a statement, NASA said the quartet finished their week with three key experiments—biomedical science, a relaxation study, and a lunar landing simulation—that will help future astronauts on missions beyond low-Earth orbit. They also practised a simulation of the procedures they will use inside the Dragon spacecraft when they reenter Earth's atmosphere. Until Crew-13 arrives, the crew will complete tasks for future experiments such as collecting blood samples to understand bone loss in space and collecting saliva samples to study how stress, sleep patterns, and the immune system change during spaceflight. 

Crew-13 ready for launch 

The Crew-13 mission is scheduled for launch on October 1 at 11:10 am EDT from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center atop SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. A backup opportunity is available the next day at 10:47 am EDT. The mission includes commander Jessica Watkins, pilot Luke Delaney and two mission specialists: Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency and Sergey Teteryatnikov of the Russian space agency, Roscosmos. 

The crew entered mandatory two-week pre-flight quarantine earlier this month and flew to the Kennedy Space Center on NASA's T-38 aircraft on Sunday. Ahead of Crew-13’s launch, NASA announced on September 25 that the space station was raised to 265.5 x 256.8 mile orbit using the Cygnus XL spacecraft thrusters which arrived at the station in April.

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