Astronauts

The Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft approaching the International Space Station (Image NASA TV)

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A few hours ago the Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and after a little more than three hours reached the International Space Station with three new crew members on board. The ultra-fast route was used which halves the journey duration. The docking with the Station’s Rassvet module was about 10 minutes late because the Kurs automatic system had some problems and cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov had to manually pilot the Soyuz MS-19.

The Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft splashing down (Photo courtesy Inspiration4 / SpaceX)

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A few hours ago, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft concluded its Inspiration4 mission splashing down without problems. Onboard were Jared Isaacman, Sian Proctor, Hayley Arceneaux, and Chris Sembroski, who finished the first completely private space mission in the Atlantic Ocean not far from Cape Canaveral. Shortly after the splashdown, the SpaceX ship called “Go Searcher” went to retrieve the Crew Dragon and its crew to transport them to the coast.

The Shenzhou 12 capsule after landing (Photo courtesy Xinhua/Ren Junchuan)

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A few hours ago, the three Chinese taikonauts of the Shenzhou 12 mission returned to Earth after spending about three months on the Chinese space station’s Tianhe core module. Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming, and Tang Hongbo had left Tianhe about a day earlier to land at a site called Dongfeng in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. It was the longest Chinese space mission completed so far but the next missions to the Chinese space station are expected to last six months.

The Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft blasting off in the Inspiration4 mission (Photo courtesy Inspiration4 / John Kraus)

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A few hours ago, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft blasted off atop a Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in the Inspiration4 mission. After about eleven minutes it successfully separated from the rocket’s last stage. It will spend three days in orbit for the first completely private crewed space mission. It opens a further frontier for space tourism but is also linked to a charity campaign for the American St. Jude hospital in Memphis.

The Shenzhou 12 mission launch (Photo courtesy Xinhua/Li Gang)

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A confirmation has arrived that three Chinese taikonauts of the Shenzhou 12 mission have reached the Tianhe core module of the Chinese space station with an automated docking maneuver. They blasted off about 6.5 hours earlier atop a Long March-2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. They are the first crew of the Chinese space station. This is the longest-duration mission in the history of the Chinese space program but it’s only the first, as crew rotation is scheduled about every three months.