Astronauts go into quarantine before mission

WASHINGTON: Two Russian cosmonauts and a US astronaut were spending their final weeks on Earth in quarantine before they are scheduled to blast off on April 9 for the International Space Station (ISS) for six months as the coronavirus pandemic sweeps Earth.

Launching from a pad in Kazakhstan, the Expedition 63 crew will depart Earth without much of the usual fanfare at the Baikonur cosmodrome and ceremonies in Moscow, as the world attempts to curb the spread of the Covid-19 disease through social distancing and citywide lockdowns.

“We are ready to go, we are healthy, we’ve been tested very well with the medical teams,” US astronaut Chris Cassidy said on Monday in a video from quarantine.

“We’ll be watching from space and we’re very curious to come home in October and see what the world looks like at that time.

“As you well know, over this last month, the situation keeps changing on a daily basis for the worse,” Cassidy added.

Even in ordinary times astronauts go through a “health stabilisation” process before launching that includes two weeks in quarantine to ensure they “aren’t sick or incubating an illness when they get to the space station,” NASA spokeswoman Stephanie Schierholz said. As the pandemic evolves, the agency is considering plans to bolster the health stabilisation checks.

The space station has continuously staffed astronauts for nearly 20 years now, serving as a test bed for an array of scientific research including studies to better understand the human immune system and micro-gravity medical experiments for vital uses on Earth.