Spacecraft

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 Dragon cargo spacecraft departing the International Space Station to end its CRS-23 mission (Image NASA TV)

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A few hours ago, the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft ended its CRS-23 (Cargo Resupply Service 23) mission for NASA splashing down smoothly in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Florida. The Dragon left the International Space Station a few hours earlier. For SpaceX, this was the third mission of the second contract with NASA to transport resupplies to the Station with the new version of the Dragon cargo spacecraft, which splashes down near the East coast of the USA instead of the Pacific Ocean.

The launch of the Tianzhou 3 cargo spacecraft (Photo courtesy CASC)

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Yesterday, the Chinese cargo spacecraft Tianzhou 3 reached the Chinese space station’s Tianhe core module. It was launched about 6.5 hours earlier on a Long March-7 Y4 rocket from the Wenchang base. This is the second cargo spacecraft launched to the new Chinese space station and carries propellant along with supplies of various kinds for the taikonauts, as the Chinese call their astronauts, who will arrive in October.

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.