NASA, JAXA, and Roscosmos Crew to Launch No Earlier Than July

NASA recently announced the four lucky astronauts who will be sent off to the International Space Station as part of the Crew-11 mission. While the agency has yet to provide a targeted launch date, it will be no earlier than July 2025.

Two of the four crew members will be NASA astronauts. The first is Commander Zena Cardman, who was previously supposed to take her first spaceflight with Crew-9. Cardman and another astronaut’s seats were given up to make room for Starliner astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams after their spacecraft experienced technical malfunctions. She was selected as a NASA astronaut in 2017 and has since worked on real-time station operations and lunar surface exploration planning.

The other NASA astronaut for Crew-11 is Pilot Mike Fincke, a retired US Air Force colonel with more than 2,000 flight hours. He has already completed three trips to the space station, logging 382 days in space and nine spacewalks as a part of Expedition 9, Expedition 18, and STS-134. He has assisted NASA throughout the Commercial Crew Program’s lifetime by propelling the SpaceX Dragon and Boeing Starliner toward certification.

The pair will be joined by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Kimiya Yui and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov as Mission Specialists. Yui has spent 142 days in space since his designation as a JAXA astronaut in 2009. He also became the first Japanese astronaut to capture JAXA’s H-II Transfer Vehicle using the ISS’s robotic arm during Expedition 44/45.

Platonov will be the mission’s second space-virgin. He was selected as a cosmonaut in 2018 and assigned as a test cosmonaut in 2021, holding a degree in Engineering from Krasnodar Air Force Academy in Aircraft Operations and Air Traffic Management.

Crew-11 will launch no earlier than July 2025 on board a SpaceX Crew Dragon. It will be a long-duration mission directly contributing to NASA’s Artemis campaign, which aims to build a long-term human presence on the Moon and pave the way for human exploration of Mars.

FMI: www.nasa.gov