Cosmonaut rounds out SpaceX’s Crew-7 mission to the space station (Image Credit: Space.com)
SpaceX’s seventh operational astronaut mission to the International Space Station (ISS) now has a full crew manifest.
Russian cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov will fly aboard Crew-7 as a mission specialist, NASA announced on Friday (June 16).
Earlier this year, the Russian space agency Roscosmos announced its intention to fly Borisov on Crew-7, as a part of ongoing seat-swap agreements with NASA. This will be Borisov’s first spaceflight since his acceptance into Russia’s astronaut corps in 2018. Borisov joins another spaceflight rookie on the mission, NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, who will serve as Crew-7’s commander.
Related: SpaceX launches Crew-6 astronaut mission to space station for NASA
JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa was also recently confirmed to be aboard Crew-7. Furukawa, who lived on the ISS for about six months in 2011, will be a mission specialist for Crew-7.
Rounding out the crew is European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Andreas Mogensen, who will serve as Crew-7’s pilot. Mogensen will be the first ESA astronaut assigned a pilot role for a mission on SpaceX‘s Crew Dragon vehicle. He first flew to space in 2015, spending 10 days on the ISS as a part of the “iriss” mission, a collaboration between ESA and LEGO Education.
The Crew-7 astronauts will fly aboard the Crew Dragon capsule Endurance, which also flew the Crew-3 and Crew-5 missions in 2021 and 2022, respectively. Endurance will launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sometime in mid-August from Launch Complex-39A, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
After Crew-7 arrives at the ISS, members of the Crew-6 mission will begin preparations to depart the station, having wrapped up their own six-month rotation. Endurance will remain docked during Crew-7’s six-month ISS residency and will return the quartet to Earth sometime in early 2024.
