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SpaceX Crew-3
2021 American crewed spaceflight to the ISS and maiden flight of Crew Dragon Endurance From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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SpaceX Crew-3 was the Crew Dragon's third NASA Commercial Crew operational flight, and its fifth overall crewed orbital flight. The mission successfully launched on 11 November 2021 at 02:03:31 UTC to the International Space Station.[5] It was the maiden flight of Crew Dragon Endurance.[6]
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This launch brought the total number of humans who have been to space to more than 600 with Maurer (600) and Barron (601).[7]
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Name
Crew Dragon capsules have been given names by their initial crews — Endeavour for the first, and Resilience for the second. On 7 October 2021, it was announced that the third capsule will be called Endurance.[8] The name honors the SpaceX and NASA teams that endured through a pandemic, building the spacecraft and training the astronauts who flew it.[9] The name also honors Endurance, the ship used by Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. The three-masted vessel sank in 1915 after being bound in ice before reaching Antarctica.[10]
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Crew
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German ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer was selected first for the mission in September 2020.[11][12][13] NASA astronauts Raja Chari and Thomas Marshburn were added on 14 December 2020 to the crew.[14][15] The fourth seat was left open in anticipation that a Russian cosmonaut would take the seat, marking the beginning of a barter agreement that would see NASA and Roscosmos trade seats on the Soyuz and Commercial Crew Vehicles, although in April 2021 then-acting NASA administration Steve Jurczyk said that this agreement would be unlikely to start until after Crew-3 had launched.[16] The fourth seat was assigned to Kayla Barron in May 2021.[17]
Chari is the first rookie astronaut to command a NASA space mission since the Skylab 4 crew blasted off to the Skylab space station in 1973. Gerald Carr, who had not flown in space before, led a three-man crew on an 84-day flight on the Skylab.[18] This was also the first spaceflight for Maurer and Barron.[19]
The first astronauts of this NASA Astronaut Group 22 (nicknamed The Turtles) to fly to space, Raja Chari and Kayla Barron on SpaceX Crew-3 took a stuffed turtle as zero-g indicator to pay a tribute to their astronaut group.[25] Additionally, to include the other crew members on board, Matthias Maurer and Tom Marshburn, the turtle was named "Pfau", a German word meaning "Peacock" for Matthias Maurer, who is German, and for Tom Marshburn, who was part of NASA Astronaut Group 19 (nicknamed The Peacocks).[26]
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Mission
The third SpaceX operational mission in the Commercial Crew Program was originally scheduled to launch on 31 October 2021.[27] However, it was delayed to 3 November 2021 due to unfavorable weather in the Atlantic Ocean,[28] and then further delayed to 7 November 2021 due to a minor medical issue with one of the astronauts.[29] Due to expected bad weather, it was again delayed to 9 November 2021.[30]
Due to the launch delays, NASA decided to return the astronauts from Crew-2 before Crew-3 launched, thus being the first Crew Dragon indirect handover of space station crews.[31] SpaceX Crew-2 departed the station on 8 November 2021 and splashed down on 9 November 2021. SpaceX Crew-3 mission launched from Cape Canaveral on 11 November 2021 at 02:03:31 UTC.[32]
The return of Crew-3 was delayed multiple times, from April 2022 to early May. Undocking happened on 5 May (05:20 UTC), with splashdown occurring the following day after spending 176 days in space.[33]
The European segment of the mission is called "Cosmic Kiss".[34]
Gallery
SpaceX Crew-3
Crew-3 astronauts during dress rehearsals
Launch of Crew-3
Crew Dragon Endurance approaches the ISS
Crew-3 reenters the atmosphere
Crew Dragon Endurance on MV Shannon after splashdown
Crew-3 astronauts after splashdown
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See also
References
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