NASA astronaut Megan McArthur recently saw her husband climb through the hatch of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, buckle up, and traverse Earth’s atmosphere. It was the first manned flight of the spacecraft, the first time humans had flown in a commercial spacecraft.
Now NASA has chosen McArthur to pilot the same spacecraft in the spring. Their mission will be Crew Dragon’s second in a series of at least six round trips to the International Space Station (ISS).
McArthur’s husband Bob Behnken is still on the ISS. He and his crewmate, Doug Hurley, have been living and working there, conducting scientific experiments and spacewalks, since the crew Dragon docked at the station on May 31.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket takes off carrying NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley inside a Crew Dragon spacecraft on mission Demo-2, May 30, 2020.
SpaceX
Their mission, called Demo-2, is a demonstration that the crew Dragon can safely transport humans to and from the ISS. In just a few days, Behnken and Hurley are ready to make the journey back to Earth. If the weather persists, they will board the Crew Dragon again on Sunday, undock from the space station, and withstand a fiery crash in the Atlantic Ocean.
If that goes well, NASA will begin routinely transporting astronauts to and from the ISS using the Crew Dragon. The next team is expected to launch in late September, then McArthur will follow with three other astronauts next year.
Meet the Crew-2 astronauts
A successful end to the Demo-2 mission this weekend would restore the human spaceflight capabilities of the United States for the first time since the Space Shuttle program ended in 2011. Crucially, it would also free NASA of its dependency each time. most expensive of the Russian Soyuz rockets.
Assuming the mission ends smoothly, the first of the Crew Dragon ferry missions (the Behnken and Hurley mission is considered a demo) will take four astronauts to the ISS: Victor Glover, Mike Hopkins, Soichi Noguchi, and Shannon Walker. On Tuesday, NASA announced the crew for the mission after that, called Crew-2. McArthur will serve as a pilot on the flight, his first trip to the space station.
Megan McArthur poses for a photo while working with the Shuttle remote manipulation system from the Atlantis flight deck.
POT
He previously flew on the space shuttle Atlantis on a mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. McArthur has degrees in aerospace engineering and oceanography.
The other three crew members are also experienced astronauts. Shane Kimbrough has flown to the ISS twice: once aboard the space shuttle Endeavor and once aboard a Soyuz rocket. In total, the retired Army colonel spent 189 days in space and completed six spacewalks.
Members of the SpaceX Crew-2 mission to the International Space Station, from left: NASA astronauts Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough, JAXA astronaut (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Akihiko Hoshide and ESA astronaut (European Space Agency) Thomas Pesquet.
POT
Two of the Crew-2 astronauts, Akihiko Hoshide and Thomas Pesquet, are from NASA’s international partners. A primary goal of NASA’s partnership with SpaceX is to give space agencies in other countries a viable alternative to Soyuz rockets as well.
Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has flown aboard a space shuttle and two Soyuz rockets. Pesquet, an astronaut from the European Space Agency (ESA), spent 196 days in space following a Soyuz launch.
“I am delighted to be the first European to fly in the new generation of manned spacecraft in the United States,” Pesquet said in a press release. “It will be very interesting for me to compare it to my first flight as a Soyuz pilot and bring this experience to the team.”
