Crew of four astronauts begin science mission on space station

Four astronauts arrived at the International Space Station yesterday to begin a sixmonth science mission.

Crew-8, comprising three Americans and a Russian, arrived at the ISS on board the SpaceX Dragon capsule Endeavour, about 24 hours after blasting off from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.

Crews have occupied the ISS since 2000, with the structure travelling at 8km per second to maintain its orbit of Earth.

“Crew-8’s mission will further the understanding of how humans learn and behave in space and how their bodies respond, and it’s all critical to our lunar exploration,” Nasa’s associate administrator Jim Free said.

“We need all of these to come together to understand how people and technologies and systems will behave when we go on longer duration missions.”

The four astronauts join those already on board the ISS, including Nasa’s Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara, the European Space Agency’s Andreas Mogensen, Japan’s Satoshi Furukawa and Russian cosmonauts Konstantin Borisov, Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub.

Matthew Dominick was Crew-8’s commander on the journey to the ISS. He was selected by Nasa in 2017 and this is his first spaceflight.

Mr Dominick has a Master’s in systems engineering, and has graduated from the US Naval Test Pilot School.

The pilot of the Endeavour, Michael Barratt, is on his third visit to the ISS, and has already spent 212 days in space before this mission.

Selected by Nasa in 2000, Dr Barratt was flight engineer on a mission in 2009 and carried out two spacewalks. He also flew on the Discovery space shuttle in 2011.

Jeanette Epps was selected by Nasa in 2009 and this is her first spaceflight. She has served as a crew support astronaut for two Nasa missions and as lead capsule communicator at mission control in Houston, Texas.

Dr Epps was previously assigned to Nasa’s Boeing Starliner-1 mission but was replaced so Boeing could have more time to complete the development of the capsule.

Alexander Grebenkin was selected by Roscosmos in 2018, and this is his first spaceflight.

A radio-electronic technician, Maj Grebenkin previously served in the technical and operational units of Russia’s air force.

Crew-8 is expected to carry out more than 200 experiments in science and research, technology development and commercialisation of low-Earth orbit.

Some of their work will involve using stem cells to create miniature versions of human organs to study degenerative diseases.

They will also test the effects of microgravity and ultraviolet radiation on plant cells.