A little while ago astronauts Jessica Meir and Andrew Morgan and cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka returned to Earth on the Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft, that landed in Kazakhstan. The three of them spent a bit more than 6 months on the International Space Station, where they arrived on September 25, 2019 as part of Expedition 61. After landing, they were assisted by a skeleton crew with the precautions needed to avoid the risk of Covid-19 infection.
During the time spent on the International Space Station with Expedition 61, the three crew members have been conducting various maintenance activities and many scientific experiments. On February 18, 2020, Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus cargo spacecraft reached the Station on its NG-13 mission. On March 9, 2020 SpaceX’s Dragon cargo spacecraft reached the Station on its CRS-20 mission and departed on April 7, 2020 to return to Earth.
During that period, no spacewalks were carried out. That’s a somewhat peculiar event, also considering that several spacewalks were carried out in the Expedition 61 period. Various tasks to be carried out outside the International Space Station were completed in the last months of 2019, so in this first part of 2020 the crew focused on maintenance tasks inside the Station.
On Wednesday, April 15, Oleg Skripochka officially handed over the command of the International Space Station to the USA astronaut Chris Cassidy, marking the beginning of Expedition 63. According to NASA’s plans, the crew should be completed in a little over a month but there’s still no certainty about the launch of astronauts on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft. The situation with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is even more complex because of the doubts that emerged during and after the test flight carried out on December 20, 2019. Eventually, it was decided to conduct a second unmanned test, so it’s impossible to say when the Starliner will be able to fly with a crew on board. The next launch of new crew members by Roscosmos is scheduled for October 2020, so in the worst-case scenario Expedition 63 will remain composed of only three members.
