Just as NASA is preparing to demonstrate "Max Power" on the ground, two astronauts on a spacewalk have provided the International Space Station (ISS) with the same.

Expedition 75 flight engineers Anil Menon of NASA and Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency installed and deployed the eighth and final ISS Roll-Out Solar Array (iROSA) on Thursday (Nov. 5), augmenting the space station's legacy solar array wings to produce as much as 30% more electricity.

"We got it done!" said Menon at the end of the 6-hour-and-59-minute spacewalk. The EVA (extravehicular activity) began at 8:36 a.m. EST and ended at 3:35 p.m. EST (1336 to 2035 GMT).

Repeating many of the same tasks as they did on an Oct. 29 spacewalk that added the penultimate iROSA, Menon and Kutryk worked this time on the starboard side of the station's backbone truss on the 3B power channel. The two retrieved the 750-pound (340 kilograms) iROSA assembly from a temporary stowage platform, carried it to the worksite by way of the Canadarm2 robotic arm and mounted it to its previously assembled bracket kit.

Menon then attached the cables to tie the iROSA into the station's systems but ran into a problem.

"We are seeing half of the expected shunt current that we want," radioed Nichole Stilwell, a NASA astronaut serving as the spacewalk officer in Mission Control. "In this current config, we are not necessarily going to deploy."

To address the issue, the connectors needed to be inspected. Out of safety concerns — given that the arrays generate electricity whenever lit by the sun — the astronauts needed to wait for the space station to enter the shadow of Earth to see what could be done. In the interim, they spent the time cleaning up their worksite and returning the Canadarm2 to its park site as they would have done after the deployment.

Fortunately, they were able to clear the issue.

"We are seeing good shunt currents on the ground, so we are go for deploy," said Stilwell.

After releasing two bolts, Kutryk and Menon watched as the array started to unfurl to its full 63-foot (19 meters) length. No motor was needed; the iROSA, as designed, used only the potential energy stored by its rolled-up carbon composite booms to extend itself. The entire process took about 10 minutes.

"Today marks the completion of not just one solar array but, over 15 years after its development, eight arrays," said Menon at the close of the spacewalk. "These solar arrays are incredible. Half the size of the old ones and bringing 40% more power."

Each of the eight iROSAs and their mounting assemblies were delivered to the space station by SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft. Beginning in June 2021, four teams of two astronauts did as was done on Thursday to deploy each array. In addition to Kutryk and Menon's work on the 2A and 3B power channels, the spacewalkers included Shane Kimbrough of NASA and Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency for the 2B and 4B channels; Josh Cassada and Frank Rubio, both with NASA, on 3A and 4A in December 2022; and NASA's Steve Bowen and Woody Hoburg on 1A and 1B in June 2023.

The need for the iROSA augmentations was discovered by flight controllers when the space station's eight original arrays began to show degraded power output as they exceeded their 15-year design life. The iROSAs provide the additional electricity needed to support ISS operations through its retirement and controlled deorbit, which are currently scheduled to occur in late 2030.

"Congratulations to you all on your stellar work to finish the last of the roll-out solar arrays and the upgrades to the ISS power system that will take it to the end of its journey," said Stilwell, addressing Menon and Kutryk. "It is fitting that we just surpassed 26 years of constant human presence on the International Space Station, and you all showed us what the best of humanity looks like executing one of the most difficult and dangerous [things] humans do and making it look easy. Congratulations!"

Menon has now logged 33 hours and 30 minutes on four spacewalks, while Kutryk has tailed 14 hours and 10 minutes on two EVAs. Thursday's spacewalk was the 101st U.S. EVA at the International Space Station without a space shuttle being present and the 286th overall in support of ISS assembly, maintenance and upgrades. It was the ninth spacewalk of 2026 and the sixth conducted by the station's 75th resident crew.

Spacewalks are hard work, so sometimes you need to take a break for a moment and snap a gorgeous selfie with your home planet in the background.

What is it?

During a pre-Halloween spacewalk on Oct. 29, 2026, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk took a moment to pose for a photograph.

In this moment, the International Space Station to which he was tethered was orbiting 267 miles (430 kilometers) above the South Atlantic Ocean down below on Earth.

During this spacewalk — the first for a Canadian since 2019 — Kutryk and NASA astronaut Anil Menon worked together to install a new roll-out solar array on the station while also performing some "get ahead" tasks to prep for the next spacewalk, which is happening today (Nov. 5).

During today's excursion, the same two astronauts will venture out into space, tethered to the space station, to install the eighth and final roll-out solar array. These eight new arrays will boost the station's available power by a total of 30%, according to NASA officials.

Why is it incredible?

When we think of astronauts working in space, we might think of the important science and research they're doing aboard the station. Astronauts work on everything from biomedical research to plant science and physics experiments. But the job also includes work on the space station itself.

Sometimes they have to venture out into the vacuum of space to fix urgent problems. These situations can be tense, and there's a lot of pressure to get things absolutely right.

But even spacewalks that do relatively mundane maintenance work, like the one on Oct. 29, come with pressure. Every minute that astronauts spend outside of the space station, there are countless risk factors floating around. Earth orbit is a very harsh environment, after all, even if it does allow for some pretty amazing selfies.

Two spacewalking astronauts will finish upgrading the International Space Station's power system today (Nov. 5), and you can watch the action live.

NASA astronaut Anil Menon and the Canadian Space Agency's Joshua Kutryk will install the eighth and final International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Array (iROSA) today, during a roughly seven-hour spacewalk that's scheduled to begin at 8:30 a.m. EST (1330 GMT).

You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, beginning at 7 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT).

Today's extravehicular activity (EVA) will be the second in a week for Menon and Kutryk, who installed the station's seventh iROSA during an Oct. 29 spacewalk. That excursion was the 100th U.S. spacewalk from the ISS to date, and the first EVA for a Canadian astronaut since 2019.

Today's spacewalk will wrap up an ambitious ISS power upgrade that has taken more than five years to pull off.

"The installation job will complete the years-long process that began in June 2021 to augment the space station’s power generating capacity from 160 kilowatts to about 215 kilowatts," NASA officials wrote about the EVA in a blog post on Tuesday (Nov. 3). That's a boost of about 30%.

Menon and Kutryk are currently sharing the ISS with five other astronauts — NASA's Luke Delaney and Jessica Watkins and cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov, Anna Kikina and Sergey Teteryatnikov.

Delaney, Kutryk, Teteryatnikov and Watkins arrived at the ISS on Oct. 1, on SpaceX's Crew-13 mission. Dubrov, Kikina and Menon got there in mid-July, aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

The three Americans currently living off Earth just made sure their electoral voices were heard.

Anil Menon told us today (Nov. 3) that he and fellow NASA astronauts Luke Delaney and Jessica Watkins voted in the U.S. midterm elections from the International Space Station (ISS).

"Yes, you can even vote from space! All three U.S. crew members had the privilege of voting from space station. We filled out an electronic ballot and sent it securely to the election officials," Menon wrote in an X post this morning.

That post included a 29-second video, in which Menon — wearing, like many of us today, an "I voted" sticker — shows us his "voting booth."

It's actually his room on the ISS, Menon explained. "Inside of it is my computer, where I was able to fill out an electronic form and send it to Harris County so I could vote today," he said.

Most NASA astronauts register to vote in Texas' Harris County; it's home to Johnson Space Center in Houston, the agency's human spaceflight hub.

Americans have been able to vote from space since 1997, when Texas passed a law allowing this to happen. The first person to take advantage of the legislation was NASA astronaut David Wolf, who cast his ballot from Russia's Mir space station that same year. (The ISS didn't welcome its first crew until November 2000.)

"Just like any other American away from home, astronauts may fill out a Federal Post Card Application to request an absentee ballot," NASA officials wrote in an astronaut-voting explainer.

The process is somewhat involved, however.

"After an astronaut fills out an electronic ballot aboard the orbiting laboratory, the document flows through NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System to a ground antenna at the agency's White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico," they added. "From New Mexico, NASA transfers the ballot to the Mission Control Center at NASA Johnson and then on to the county clerk responsible for casting the ballot. To preserve the vote's integrity, the ballot is encrypted and accessible only by the astronaut and the clerk."

Delaney and Watkins launched to the ISS on Oct. 1 on SpaceX's Crew-13 mission. Menon has been there since mid-July, arriving aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

The trio currently share the orbiting lab with four other people — Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk and cosmonauts Anna Kikina, Pyotr Dubrov and Sergey Teteryatnikov. Kutryk and Teteryatnikov are members of Crew-13, whereas Dubrov and Kikina shared the Soyuz with Menon.

A tiny robot cube is zipping around the International Space Station, trying to help astronauts with the endless challenging tasks onboard.

What is it?

Reminiscent of Rocky rolling around the lab helping out Dr. Ryland Grace in Project Hail Mary, the Astrobee robot is a helpful assistant for astronauts aboard the space station.

A metal cube about the size of a toaster, the Astrobees are free-flying robotic assistants that NASA developed to help out astronauts. The first two Astrobee robots (named Bumble and Honey) were sent to the station in 2019. The third Astrobee robot, named Queen, joined later that year, and 7 years later, the program is still going strong.

So what can a free-floating cube help with? The robots are designed to assist the astronauts onboard with testing new technologies in microgravity and helping mission team members back on Earth to better observe inside the station. The little robot cubes can even help astronauts with everyday chores in space.

In this image, snapped by NASA astronaut and Crew-13 commander Jessica Watkins, we can see one of the Astrobee robots helping out in the station's Kibo laboratory.

Why is it incredible?

The idea of a robot assistant helping out with chores and technology development aboard an orbiting space laboratory sounds positively science fiction.

While Astrobee is certainly not the first robot in space or aboard the space station, its compact shape and ability to fly autonomously gives it a unique quality. It really looks like a companion aboard the space station.

While the robotic space helpers of today might be cute little cubes, the success of the Astrobee program begs the question of how robots in space might continue to evolve. Will astronauts on the moon have robotic companions autonomously exploring and helping out? What will they look like?

On Nov. 2, 2000, the International Space Station welcomed its first long-term residents: NASA astronaut Bill Shepherd and two Russian cosmonauts, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev. The mission was called Expedition 1.

Before this expedition, NASA had launched five, one-week-long Space Shuttle missions to help build the space station and bring up supplies. But this time, the crew would be staying for four and a half months, and they weren't taking the shuttle. Instead, they took a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, and this was the first Soyuz to ever dock at the space station.

During their stay at the space station, they unpacked supplies and installed new equipment, including the first solar arrays. They left on the space shuttle Discovery, which brought up the Expedition 2 crew that would take their place.

Why it mattered

As of today, there has been a continuous astronaut presence in space aboard the International Space Station for 26 years. For all of these years, not a day has gone by without someone living in space, orbiting our planet from aboard the space station.

While the ISS was not the first space station, it has been the longest-running space statin by far. This first crew were pioneers, showing how humans could actually live and work aboard this station. This exploratory mission proved that the station could successfully support astronaut crews.

Since this mission 26 years ago, there have been literally hundreds of astronauts from around the world who have flown to and lived aboard the ISS. While NASA has stated that the station might be decommissioned in the coming years, these accomplishments will remain forever in spaceflight history.

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Two astronauts successfully installed and deployed the second-to-last upgraded solar array for the International Space Station (ISS) during the 100th U.S. spacewalk from the orbiting outpost.

Anil Menon of NASA and Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), both ISS Expedition 75 crewmates, completed the 7-hour-and-11-minute extravehicular activity (EVA) at 3:08 p.m. EDT (1908 GMT) on Thursday (Oct. 29). The spacewalk began and ended inside the U.S. Quest airlock, with both astronauts wearing NASA's extravehicular mobility unit (EMU) spacesuits.

It was the first spacewalk by a Canadian astronaut since April 2019, when David Saint-Jacques ventured into the void with NASA's Anne McClain.

Once outside, Menon and Kutryk worked on unbolting the ISS roll-out solar array (iROSA) from a temporary stowage platform. The 10-by-2-by-4-foot (3-by-0.6-by-1.2-meter) rolled-up assembly was delivered to the space station inside the unpressurized trunk of SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule earlier this month, on the company's 35th ISS resupply mission for NASA.

Menon then secured himself at the end of the Canadarm2 robotic arm and carried the 750-pound (340-kilogram) iROSA to the space station's port side, where he and Kutryk next installed it on the 2A electrical power channel. Kutryk made his way to the worksite along the station's backbone truss.

Using bolts to mount the IROSA in place and connecting its electrical cables to tie it into the station's power system (during a night pass, out of safety concerns), the array was ready to be extended. No motor was needed to deploy the iROSA to its 63-foot (19-m) length. The potential energy held by the assembly's rolled-up carbon composite booms was enough to fully unroll the panel.

"And we see the iROSA deploying now," reported Mission Control four hours and 23 minutes into the spacewalk.

About 12 minutes later, the array had fully extended, draping over about half of the larger but less capable legacy panel on the P4 truss. The station's eight original arrays are showing degraded power output as they have exceeded their 15-year design life. The iROSAs, when used in tandem with their older counterparts, have increased the station's power supply by 20% to 30%.

The additional power is needed to support ongoing and planned station operations, including its safe and controlled deorbit, which is currently scheduled for 2030.

Having worked ahead of their schedule, Menon and Kutryk removed some of the beams holding the final iROSA in place on its temporary platform and rotated two launch locks that were used in its delivery on Dragon.

Thursday's EVA was the 100th U.S. outing from the space station without a now-retired space shuttle docked to the complex. Overall, it was the 285th spacewalk in support of ISS assembly, maintenance and upgrades, including 66 EVAs out of the Russian segment of the station and 119 by visiting shuttle crews.

The first U.S. spacewalk outside of the Quest airlock was made by Expedition 4 crewmates Carl Walz and Daniel Bursch on Feb. 20, 2002. The 5-hour-and-47-minute EVA mostly tested Quest's systems and completed "housekeeping chores."

"Being outside, I can say it is always sunny in space," said Menon at the conclusion of Thursday's EVA. "I find it incredible what we have been able to do to provide new solar arrays to the space station. In fact, we have been ... doing complex operations like this for over 26 years."

"This is USOS [United States Operating Segment] EVA 100, which is an incredible milestone. I think it really signifies how much we have done," he said.

This was Menon's fourth spacewalk and Kutryk's first. Menon has now logged 26 hours and 31 minutes working in the vacuum of space during his current stay on the space station.

Kutryk is the fifth Canadian astronaut to conduct an EVA. He and Menon are scheduled for another EVA on Nov. 5, when they are expected to install the eighth and final iROSA, completing the five-year process to upgrade the station's power supply.

The next International Space Station (ISS) spacewalk will have more maple-leaf flavor than usual, as a Canadian astronaut will become the first to go outside the orbiting complex in seven years.

Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Joshua Kutryk, who's also a colonel in the Royal Canadian Air Force, will help the ISS boost its power supply during his first-ever spacewalk on Thursday (Oct. 29). Kutryk will be joined by NASA astronaut Anil Menon, who has done three spacewalks already and also serves as a colonel with the U.S. Space Force.

The duo are scheduled to venture outside the orbiting lab at 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT), kicking off a spacewalk that will last roughly 6 hours and 45 minutes. You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, beginning at 6:30 a.m. EDT (1030 GMT).

It will be the first of two extravehicular activities (EVAs) for Menon and Kutryk, with the second expected to occur no sooner than Nov. 5. During the two spacewalks, the astronauts will deploy the seventh and eighth International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Arrays (iROSAs).

iROSAs lie on top of the existing, decades-old arrays on ISS, which are naturally degrading with age. The first iROSA rolled out in 2021. Once all eight are installed and running, the station will see its power supply rise from 160 kilowatts to about 215 kilowatts — a boost of roughly 30%.

A Canadian capcom, too

The capcom (capsule communicator) for both spacewalks will be CSA astronaut Jenni Gibbons. She has experience in this role already, serving as a capcom on NASA's Artemis II mission around the moon this past April. And she'll serve as lead capcom for Artemis III, which will test crewed lunar landers in Earth orbit next summer, if all goes to plan.

Also helping Kutryk and Menon will be Canadian space technology, specifically Canadarm2 — the ISS robotic arm tasked for spacewalk support, among other maintenance duties.

"It's been busy preparing for the upcoming spacewalks," Menon said about Canadarm2 in a Saturday (Oct. 24) X post. Ground controllers recently moved the arm over to the "trunk" or storage area of a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft, which brought the two iROSA arrays up earlier this month.Canadarm2 picked up the IROSAs and moved them to a transporter for the astronauts. "It even loosened bolts for us before the spacewalks … I'm grateful for the help," Menon added.

During the Oct. 29 spacewalk, Canadarm2 will do even more. Kutryk and Menon will slide an array off its transport rail and then have Menon get onto a Canadarm2 platform, to put the array into his hands. From inside the ISS, NASA astronauts Luke Delaney and Jessica Watkins will carefully move Canadarm2 to put Menon and the array at the ISS port-installation site, supporting the 2A electrical-power channel.

Each array is about 10 feet (3 meters) long when folded up and weighs 750 pounds (340 kilograms) here on Earth, according to Garrett Hehn, NASA's spacewalk flight director. The agency therefore knows the iROSAs are "a lot to handle," he said during a press conference on Oct. 20 that previewed the two upcoming spacewalks.

As such, NASA looked at how previous iROSA spacewalks were performed and created a new "elegant series of maneuvers, where we've tried to rotate around the actual center of mass of the arrays, rather than the crew member," Hehn added. "It was a lesson learned from previous EVAs, of how we thought we could make it a little less tiring on Anil."

Kutryk will move over to the installation location, hand-over-hand, to join Menon. There, the two will place the IROSA onto the older solar array, using a "mod kit" placed on a previous spacewalk. "We've got a series of bolts to structurally attach it [the IROSA] and release, in order for this folded-up configuration to fold open, and basically go from about 10 feet long to around 20 feet [6 m] long," Hehn explained.

"These arrays," he added, "I kind of think of them like a snap bracelet … They basically have a series of magnets up the side, where they deploy with enough energy that it just continues rolling out steadily. That process will take about 10 minutes on the day of the EVA."

Following that, the astronauts need to access power cables at a time when that area of the ISS is not in sunlight; the station will be (as always) moving through its orbit, circling the Earth every 90 minutes, so timing will be important.

"We can't have any sun on the arrays, whenever we're handling those hot cables," Hehn said. "Basically, we'll use a jumper to bring together both the legacy arrays' power, and this new rollout solar arrays' power, in order to have a pretty substantial gain to our power-generation capability."

The Nov. 5 EVA will essentially have the astronauts do the same installation procedure with another array, this time heading to the starboard side of the space station. The last IROSA installation, however, will take place a little farther from the station, beyond Canadarm2's reach. So the astronauts will do a "leapfrog" to get out there.

After Menon, the array and Canadarm2 are brought to the installation location, Hehn said, Kutryk — moving to the same location by himself, hand over hand — will go into another platform installed on the station truss, and take the IROSA from Menon's hands. As Kutryk waits in place, Menon will exit the robotics platform, move it from the Canadarm2 to another spot on the space station's truss, and then get back on to the platform to hold the IROSA securely for installation for the 3B electrical-power channel.

"This is the way that we close that final distance that the robotic arm is unable to do on its own," Hehn said.

Canadian robots, support teams — and new funding

The CSA's last spacewalk was during the agency's previous mission seven years ago, which involved astronaut David Saint-Jacques. On April 8, 2019, Saint-Jacques successfully fought difficult equipment during a busy excursion alongside NASA astronaut Anne McClain.

CSA has a 2.3% contribution to ISS, usually working out to a flight every five or six years. However, Kutryk's slot was delayed two years, from 2024 to 2026, because he was originally assigned to fly up on Boeing's Starliner capsule, which needs more flight testing following numerous issues that cropped up during its crewed demonstration flight in 2024.

Kutryk, who launched Oct. 1 aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon with three other astronauts, has generated a lot of political and industry excitement in Canada. His mission marks a rare pair of CSA astronaut launches in a single year, as Artemis II astronaut Jeremy Hansen just launched in April. (The last time this happened was in 2009, when Robert Thirsk was doing a long-duration station excursion and Julie Payette visited during a two-week space shuttle mission.)

Canadian astronaut missions are unusual, even when including private missions — or non-CSA government astronauts, like now-retired NASA astronaut Andrew Feustel, who has dual U.S.-Canadian citizenship. Canada is therefore using the new CSA mission as a catalyst. In recent weeks, Canada announced several government and industry commitments to keep the momentum going even after Kutryk returns next spring.

For example, Canada just announced its first bipartisan space caucus, named Hansen a space advisor to the prime minister, pledged to soon give CSA its first space strategy since 2019, and promised, if at all possible, to announce a mission assignment for Gibbons within the next year. (The latter may depend on factors such as NASA's availability for missions, as Canada does not launch astronauts on its own.)

On the industry side, Canada's defense department last week promised the launch company NordSpace $20 million CDN ($14 million USD) for a 10-year launch pad access agreement at the company's young spaceport in the province Newfoundland and Labrador; additional mission costs will be paid when those are ordered. Canada also recently promised $200 million CDN ($140 million USD) to Maritime Launch Services over 10 years, committing to a launch pad at the company's emerging spaceport in Nova Scotia.

On October 23, 2007, the space shuttle Discovery launched the Harmony module to the International Space Station.

The Harmony module is a utility hub 14 feet wide and 24 feet long, or about the length of a minibus. It joins the European Space Agency's Columbus module and Japan's Kibo laboratory and serves as the crew quarters for the American astronauts.

Once it was installed, the space station grew from about the size of a three-bedroom house to something more like a five-bedroom house. When astronauts delivered Harmony to the space station, they left it temporarily attached to the Unity node.

After the shuttle left, astronauts used the space station's robotic arm to move the shuttle docking port out of the way at the Destiny module. This made room for Harmony to then dock at its permanent home next to the Destiny module.

Why it mattered

In 2007, the International Space Station was much smaller than it is today in terms of living space for its astronaut crew. The Harmony connecting module changed all that.

The STS-120 mission opened a new phase of ISS expansion by adding a vital connecting hub for future modules. Prior to Harmony's launch, the last new room addition to the ISS had occurred in 2001, when Russia's Pirs docking module (since discarded) arrived.

The Harmony module (its original name was Node 2), was the second NASA-led hub module (after the Unity, or Node 1, module) for the ISS. It was built for NASA by the Italy-based Thales Alenia Space and is covered with five "common berthing mechanisms," or connecting points for different ISS modules.

After the two-week STS-120 flight, Harmony was moved from a temporary berth at the Unity module to the forward port on the NASA's main Destiny laboratory. Once there, it served as a connection point for Europe's Columbus lab on the starboard side, and Japan's massive Kibo lab on the port side. Some of its ports have been used by visiting caargo ships and a docking port on its roof allows visiting vehicles to park there.

Inside the module are eight payload racks that include four used for avionics and four others for either stowage or crew quarters. NASA's astronaut crew quarters are based in the Harmony module. The name Harmony was selected durng a public naming contest by NASA.

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The astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-12 mission to the International Space Station wish that we could all see Earth as they just did.

An orbital view reveals the immense beauty of our blue planet, the only world we know of that hosts life. But it also highlights how fragile that life is, tethered to our lonely Earth in the vast void of space, according to Crew-12 commander Jessica Meir of NASA.

"You see this very thin, tenuous band of an atmosphere, and you know that that is all that is supporting life, and we really need to do our best to protect it," Meir said on Thursday afternoon (Oct. 15), during a press conference that discussed the recently concluded Crew-12 mission.

"I wish that I could bring all the eyes of all the humans to look back at the Earth in this extraordinary way that we are so privileged to have," she added. "I think it really does change you philosophically and [in] how you see each other, how you see yourself, how you see the human race when you look on it down from the vantage point that we have from above — you know, [it] gives everybody this understanding that we need to protect our planet, that it's not only so beautiful, but it's so precious."

From the International Space Station (ISS), Meir said, it's clear that everything on Earth is connected — and that the borders we've laid down between states and nations are artificial constructs.

"You realize that we really are one human when you are in space," she said. "I wish I could share that perspective with all the eyes of all the humans. I think it would be a very healthy thing for everyone to understand.

Crew-12 mission specialist Andrey Fedyaev, of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, voiced similar sentiments, though he would turn an ISS visitor's eyes inward, to focus on the crew.

"I always say that the life of crewmembers on board the space station is the best example of how people need to live on Earth," Fedyaev said during Thursday's briefing (in Russian; in interpreter translated his words into English in real time)."

"We don't have borders. We are all friendly. We're just one crew, and the safety of the crew, the safety of the station, depends on the actions of the entire crew," he added. "So, if humankind does arrive at the same conclusion — that our Earth, our planet, is one and the same space vessel that flies through space — we need to take care of it and not to destroy it. So, that's what I would like to show to everyone on Earth."

Meir and Fedyaev are far from the only ones to have their perpsectives shifted by a space mission. Pretty much every astronaut experiences this phenomenon, which is known as the overview effect, a term coined in 1987 by space philosopher Frank White.

Crew-12 consisted of Meir, Fedyaev, NASA astronaut Jack Hathaway (the mission's pilot) and the European Space Agency's Sophie Adenot (mission specialist). It was the second spaceflight for Meir and Fedyaev and the first for Hathaway and Adenot.

The quartet launched toward the ISS on Feb. 13 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Their Crew Dragon capsule, named Freedom, arrived at the orbiting lab a day later.

Crew-12 spent nearly eight months aboard the ISS, finally returning to Earth on Oct. 8. They conducted a wide range of scientific experiments and maintenance work during that time and set a few records as well.

For example, Adenot became the first French woman ever to perform a spacewalk, and she broke the mark for longest continuous spaceflight by a European at 237 days. The previous record, 201 days, was set by Luca Parmitano in 2019-2020.

A Dragon has settled into its nest after a more than two-day-long orbital pursuit.

SpaceX's cargo Dragon, flying the CRS-35 (35th Commercial Resupply Services) mission for NASA, rendezvoused with the International Space Station (ISS) this morning (Oct. 15), delivering fresh food, long-term provisions, research and hardware to the orbital lab and its crew.

Coverage of Dragon's arrival at the ISS began at 9:00 a.m. EDT (1315 GMT), as the spacecraft approached from approximately 2.3 miles (3.6 km) away. NASA astronaut Anil Menon served as the station's prime crew member this morning, responsible for monitoring Dragon's approach and autonomous procedures. Docking occurred with the space-face port of the station's Harmony module at 10:27 a.m. EDT (1427 GMT), as the ISS flew about 250 miles (400 km) above South Africa, traveling around 17,500 mph (28,000 kph).

Dragon's arrival brings more than 6,300 pounds (2,860 kilograms) of food, research equipment and other supplies, including flight support equipment to replace components on the Canadarm2, a toilet dose pump, a toilet pretreat quality sensor, a robot micro-conical tool used for station maintenance and the very last of eight upgraded solar panels designed to augment the station's power capabilities.

In addition to the usual provisions carried on this mission, Dragon also brought a special suprise for Menon, who is celebrating his 50th birthday today, according to NASA's broadcast spokesperson.

CRS-35 launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the company's pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Tuesday (Oct. 13). Liftoff occurred at 6:35 a.m. EDT (1035 GMT), and the Falcon 9's upper stage deployed the Dragon in low Earth orbit (LEO) a short 10 minutes later. Thanks to the trajectory of the space station's orbit and the near-dawn hour of the launch, the Falcon 9's ascent to orbit was viewed by millions up and down the U.S. East Coast, who witnessed a rare "space jellyfish" phenomenon from the rocket's exhaust plume.

The supplies delivered on CRS-35 will largely support the station's newest astronaut inhabitants, the members of SpaceX's Crew-13 mission for NASA. The four-person crew arrived aboard the ISS on Oct. 1, relieving the members of Crew-12, who returned to Earth a week later.

Crew-12 astronauts will address the media this afternoon (Oct. 15) to discuss their mission and their return after nearly eight months on orbit. A live broadcast of that event will also be available to stream on Space.com's homepage beginning at 3:30 p.m. EDT (1930 GMT).

Cargo Dragon's nominal orbital insertion on Tuesday placed it on course to catch up with the ISS after a 51-hour LEO chase. After rendezvous this morning, Dragon will autonomously dock to the zenith port on the station's Harmony module. It will remain docked with the ISS for about a month before being packed with supplies, waste and research for its return, safe splashdown and recovery on Earth.

Rockets are launching to space on a near-daily basis these days, but short of livestreaming a liftoff from the comfort of your Wi-Fi router, relatively few spectators are in the right place and time to see one with their own eyes.

That wasn't the case Tuesday morning (Oct. 13), when SpaceX launched the CRS-35 mission for NASA. A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 6:35 a.m. EDT (1035 GMT), carrying a cargo variant of SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft on the company's 35th commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Following the northward path of the space station's orbit at the time, the rocket flew a trajectory along the United States' East Coast.

Falcon 9's expanding engine plume grew substantially wider than the rocket itself as it climbed in altitude into thinner, less dense air, and was illuminated by the early dawn light, making the sight visible to millions. "You can imagine my surprise when I opened my back door to let the dogs out this morning," Ellen Alence told Space.com. She snapped a pic of the rocket from her farm Colbert, Georgia.

"Many of you are talking about the 'space jellyfish' following this morning's launch from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida," NASA's Kennedy Space Center wrote in a post on X. The post explains the "jellyfish" phenomenon that is sometimes visible during dawn and dusk launches, and included additional photos of the launch.

"A jellyfish happens near sunrise or sunset when the exhaust plume from the rocket becomes brightly illuminated, creating a glowing shape resembling a jellyfish," the post said.

Further up the coast, Richard Mack Wilson-Leigh spotted the flight from Durham, North Carolina. His view of the rocket came just seconds before the vehicle's stage separation, which was followed immediately by the rocket's main booster performing an engine burn to right its trajectory for landing back at the Cape. Wilson-Leigh said that part caught him off guard more than the initial site of the rocket. "I thought it blew up at first," he jokingly told Space.com.

"At first, I thought it was a comet," Wilson-Leigh said. "My mind jumped between two thoughts: that is just beautiful beyond belief, and it is the end of the world.”

That stage separation came about 2.5 minutes after liftoff, and put on a dazzling display for those awake to see it this morning. As Falcon 9's booster began the journey to its landing zone, the rocket's second stage continued onward to orbit with Dragon and the capsule's 6,300 pounds (2,860 kilograms) of cargo for the ISS.

The spacecraft will spend roughly two days catching up to the ISS, where a recent personnel rotation swapped the astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-12 mission with those of Crew-13. The latter arrived aboard the orbital laboratory Oct. 1, which was followed several days later by the return of Crew-12 to Earth on Oct. 8.

The Dragon carrying the contents of CRS-35's manifest will arrive at the station Thursday morning (Oct. 15), and will autonomously dock to the space-facing port of the Harmony module at around 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT). Coverage of the arrival here at Space.com beginning at 9:15 a.m. EDT (1315 GMT).

NASA astronaut Anil Menon captured a gorgeous view of the northern lights dancing over the night side of Earth from the International Space Station on Oct. 10 using an iPhone camera.

What is it?

Menon's photo reveals spectacular pink, purple and red auroras glowing in Earth's upper atmosphere above a sparse dappling of city lights, subtly blurred by the motion of the orbital spacecraft over the course of the exposure.

Bright stars glimmer between the solar panels and outer hulls of the ISS and visiting spacecraft, painted purple by the auroral display. "Flying through is rare and amazing," Menon wrote in a separate aurora video he posted to X on Oct. 10. "You can see the lights on the outside of [the] station reflecting back like Christmas LEDs. It's definitely more immersive."

Why is it amazing?

Menon captured the auroras during a period of heightened geomagnetic activity, after several coronal mass ejections (CMEs) struck Earth's magnetic field, triggering geomagnetic storms ranging from minor (G1) to strong (G3) over the weekend.

During geomagnetic storms, more charged particles are accelerated along Earth's magnetic field lines toward the polar regions, where they collide with gases in the upper atmosphere; they excite them, causing them to release energy as light and producing spectacular auroral displays.

The blue-purple colors seen in Menon's image are largely produced by nitrogen at altitudes of around 60-120 miles (100-200 kilometers) , while the red hue comes from oxygen atoms higher up, typically above 125 miles (200 kilometers).

The photo is particularly impressive because it was captured on an iPhone camera, as opposed to the more traditional Nikon cameras that astronauts sometimes use to capture Earth during their time aboard the ISS.

Smartphone astrophotography has become increasingly popular over recent years, with some models now featuring bespoke modes for capturing the night sky. iPhones were even used by the astronauts of the Artemis 2 mission to document their historic flyby of the moon earlier this year!

Interested in capturing your own images of the night sky using your mobile phone? Then be sure to check out our guide to photographing stars, the moon and the Milky Way with nothing but your smartphone camera.

SpaceX launched its latest cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday morning (Oct. 13).

A Falcon 9 rocket launched a robotic Dragon capsule to the orbiting lab from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Tuesday at 6:35 a.m. EDT (1035 GMT).

The launch kicks off the CRS-35 mission, so named because it will be the 35th that SpaceX flies under a Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA.

If all goes according to plan, Dragon will reach the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday (Oct. 15), docking autonomously to the space-facing port of its Harmony module at around 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT). You can watch the arrival here at Space.com as well; coverage will start at 9:15 a.m. EDT (1315 GMT).

CRS-35 will deliver 6,300 pounds (2,860 kilograms) of supplies to the astronauts aboard the orbiting lab, including the final set of International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Arrays (iROSAs), which will boost the orbiting lab's energy budget.

There's also quite a bit of scientific gear heading up on the flight.

Dragon "will deliver hardware to manufacture artificial retinas in microgravity to help restore vision on Earth and 3D heart tissue models to advance large‑scale drug testing on future missions," NASA officials wrote in a CRS-35 launch preview on Oct. 7.

"The spacecraft will carry materials to study how a new type of glass forms in microgravity and brain organoids that could reveal treatment targets for neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis," they added.

Dragon will stay attached to the ISS for about a month, then head back down to Earth with scientific experiments and other hardware. It will splash down safely under parachutes in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast.

SpaceX's Dragon is the only currently operational freighter that can carry cargo in the downward direction. The other three — Russia's Progress, Japan's HTV-X and Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL — are all expendable, burning up in Earth's atmosphere after their time at the ISS is done.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 6:59 a.m. EDT on Oct. 13 with news of a successful launch.

Northrop Grumman's robotic Cygnus XL spacecraft departed the International Space Station today (Oct. 9) after a six-month stay.

Northrop Grumman's uncrewed Cygnus XL freighter was released by the station's huge Canadarm2 robotic arm today at 12:44 p.m. EDT (1644 GMT), while the duo flew 260 miles (418 kilometers) above the Pacific Ocean.

The departing vehicle is the second of Northrop Grumman's "Cygnus XL" line of freighters but the 24th Cygnus of any type to fly cargo to the orbiting lab. The company named it the S.S. Steven R. Nagel, after a NASA astronaut who flew four space shuttle missions in the 1980s and 1990s.

The S.S. Steven R. Nagel launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on April 11, carrying 11,000 pounds (4,990 kilograms) of science gear and supplies to the International Space Station (ISS). It's carrying some stuff down as well — thousands of pounds of trash, which will burn up along with the Cygnus when it reenters Earth's atmosphere on Sunday (Oct. 11).

That's the usual fate for three of the four robotic ISS resupply vehicles in operation today — Cygnus XL, Russia's Progress and Japan's HTV-X. Only SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule is reusable; it wraps up its orbital flights with parachute-aided ocean splashdowns.

Cygnus XL is different than Dragon in another way as well: The Northrop Grumman vehicle does not dock to the ISS on its own. Rather, it's grappled by Canadarm2, which berths it to the station and moves it around in other ways as necessary.

During today's operation, which was commanded from the ground, Canadarm2 detached the S.S. Steven R. Nagel from the Earth-facing port of the ISS' Unity module and then maneuvered it into position for release at 12:45 p.m. NASA astronaut Luke Delaney monitored these activities from the ISS.

"We're just really excited to have had the S.S. Stephen R. Nagel on board, and all the science and research, critical hardware," Delaney said shortly after the Cygnus was released.

"Appreciate all the teams that came together to make this complex operation a success, from assembly, launching, docking and now the undock," he added. "Thanks for continuing to push the boundaries of human knowledge and experiments on board, to include the research during this deorbit phase. These true are the building blocks of the future of space exploration."

And about that deorbit science: The S.S. Stephen R. Nagel is carrying heat shield prototypes that will get a test during the freighter's fiery reentry.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 1 p.m. ET on Oct. 9 with news of the Cygnus XL's departure from the ISS.

On Oct. 7, 2002, the space shuttle Atlantis launched from Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-112. This mission brought the Starboard 1 (S1) truss segment to the International Space Station.

The S1 truss is part of the backbone of the space station, and it provides structural support for the thermal control system. During the launch, a chunk of insulating foam broke off of the external tank and hit the bottom of the rocket booster, leaving a huge dent.

Luckily this didn't pose any problems for STS-112, but this was the same thing that caused the Columbia shuttle disaster just three months later. NASA later redesigned the shuttle to prevent this problem.

Why it mattered

The 11-day mission of NASA's STS-112 flight aboard the shuttle Atlantis delievered a key component of the International Space Station as well as critical cart for astronauts spacewalking outside the orbiting lab.

The primary goal of STS-112 was to deliver the 28,000-pound S1 truss to the station so it could be attached to the right side of the station's central S0 truss, the core of its 360-foot (110-meter) truss backbone.

The Boeing-built S1 truss contains a large ammonia-cooled radiator used to keep the station from overheating (its twin is on the opposite side's Port 1 truss), and is about 45 feet (13.7 m) It's made mostly out of aluminum and also carries power and cooling lines between truss segments.

NASA astronaut Jeffrey Ashby commanded the STS-112 mission, with Pamela Melroy as pilot. NASA mission specialists Sandy Magnus, David Wolf, Piers Sellers and Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin rounded out the crew.

The astronauts performed three spacewalks on the mission to install the S1 truss, attach the plumbing lines for its radiators and install a so-called CETA cart (short for Crew Equipment Translation Aid) on the truss rail system so future spacewalkers could use it to move gear around.

The mission also delivered about 1,800 pounds of cargo to the station and returned about the same amount of stuff back to Earth.

Want more space history? Check out our full On This Day In Space Story archive and watch our On This Day In Space videos on YouTube.

On Oct. 6, 1992, the United States and Russia signed an agreement to share astronauts and cosmonauts on human spaceflight missions.

Known as the Agreement on Human Spaceflight Cooperation, this plan laid out the details for the joint Shuttle-Mir Program. Under this program, NASA's space shuttles would fly to Russia's Mir space station and carry Russian cosmonauts on board.

Meanwhile, American astronauts started flying in the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, which still carries international crews to the International Space Station to this day.

Why it mattered

The signing of the Agreement on Human Spaceflight Cooperation between the United States and Russia set the stage for what has become over 30 years of international cooperation in space between not just the two countries, but over a dozen others as well.

At the time, the agreement was aimed solely at the Shuttle-Mir program, which sent seven American astronauts to the Mir space station between 1994 and 1998. During those years, 10 NASA space shuttle missions visited Mir.

Mir would eventually host 125 cosmonauts and astronauts from 12 different countries throughout its 13 years in orbit. Mir was deorbited on March 23, 2001, when it fell from space to burn up in Earth's atmosphere, with any surviving debris falling into the Pacific Ocean.

In 1993, one year after the U.S.-Russia space agreement went into effect, Russia joined NASA in what would become the International Space Station, a cooperative project to build the largest single crewed spacecraft ever in orbit. NASA, Russia's Roscosmos and three other space agencies (from Japan, Canada and Europe), oversee a group of more than 15 countries working on the ISS.

Russia even launched the first component of the International Space Station in 1998.

Want more space history? Check out our full On This Day In Space Story archive and watch our On This Day In Space videos on YouTube.

The four astronauts of SpaceX’s Crew-12 mission returned to Earth this morning (Oct. 8) after nearly eight months in space.

Crew-12's Crew Dragon capsule, named "Freedom," undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday morning (Oct. 7), beginning a roughly 27-hour trip back to its home planet.

Everything went well during the journey: Freedom splashed down as planned in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Los Angeles today at 11:34 a.m. EDT (1534 GMT). Not long after that, the four astronauts were safely extracted from the capsule aboard a recovery ship. They'll be taken to terra firma for standard medical examinations and to begin the 45-day-long postflight conditioning process, which will help their bodies readjust to life with gravity.

"The crew is doing well. They were all smiles exiting the capsule," Bill Spetch, deputy manager of commercial, NASA’s Low Earth Orbit Program, said during a post-splashdown press conference today. "It's great to have them back after 237 days in space, 235 of those on the space station."

The Crew-12 astronauts are Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway of NASA, the European Space Agency's (ESA) Sophie Adenot, and Andrey Fedyaev of the Russian space agency Roscosmos. Meir and Fedyaev had each been to space once before, while Crew-12 was the first mission for Hathaway and Adenot.

The quartet launched to the ISS atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Feb. 13. Their arrival brought the station up to its normal complement of seven crewmembers. It had been operating with a skeleton crew of three since Jan. 15, when SpaceX's Crew-11 mission headed home a month early to deal with a medical issue experienced by one of its astronauts, NASA's Mike Fincke.

That was the first medical evacuation in the long history of the ISS. But it was not an emergency situation, NASA officials stressed at the time, and Fincke is doing fine now here on terra firma. (He retired in August with a total of 549 days in space, the fourth-most ever for a NASA astronaut.)

Crew-12, in turn, was relieved by the four-person Crew-13, which arrived at the ISS last Thursday (Oct. 1). Crew-13 made it to the station less than eight hours after launch — the quickest-ever ISS trip for an American spacecraft. (The world record is just over three hours, by a Russian Soyuz crewed vehicle.)

Crew-13 was originally supposed to launch on Sept. 12. However, an issue with the propulsion system on its Crew Dragon capsule, named "Grace," pushed things back, giving Crew-12 a few extra weeks in orbit.

The Crew-12 astronauts were very busy during their nearly 10 months off Earth, performing a variety of maintenance work and dozens of scientific experiments.

Then there were the spacewalks. Meir performed four of them, bringing her lifetime total to seven. And on Aug. 18, Adenot stepped outside the ISS, becoming the first French woman ever to walk in space. She did two more over the next two weeks, including one with Meir, which was just the sixth all-female extravehicular activity in the station's history.

Adenot also set a record on Crew-12, spending more time in space continuously (237 days) than any other ESA astronaut ever had. Luca Parmitano set the previous record of 201 days back in 2019-2020.

The Crew-12 astronauts felt a mix of emotions about their homecoming, as big transitions are always bittersweet. Indeed, Meir gave us a sense of this a few weeks back.

"What I'm looking forward to most is seeing my three-and-a-half-year-old daughter,” Meir said during a Sept. 16 call with reporters from the station.

"I'm so looking forward to seeing nature again," she added, "feeling the breeze on my face, the wind rustling through the leaves, experiencing all those things that we don't have up here. But I will very, very much miss being weightless all the time and the incredible views that we have."

Splashdown didn't wrap up all Crew-12 activities today. NASA and SpaceX will talk about the mission this afternoon, during a press conference scheduled to start at 1:15 p.m. EDT (1715 GMT). The briefing will also discuss the planned Oct. 13 launch of SpaceX's robotic CRS-35 cargo mission to the ISS. Participants are:

• Bill Spetch, deputy manager of Commercial, NASA's Low Earth Orbit Program
• Dr. Liz Warren, deputy chief scientist, NASA's Low Earth Orbit Program
• Lee Echerd, senior mission manager, Customer Operations and Integration, SpaceX
• Andreas Mogensen, leader, Human Exploration Group, (ESA)

Editor's note: This story was updated at 8:30 a.m. ET on Oct. 7 with news of successful undocking. It was updated again at 6 p.m. ET that day to correct its headline, which previously said the Crew-12 astronauts have spent nearly 10 months in space. It was updated again at noon ET on Oct. 8 with news of successful splashdown.

SpaceX's latest astronaut launch just set a new space record.

The company's Crew-13 mission for NASA arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) today (Oct. 1) at 7:05 p.m. EDT (2305 GMT), 7 hours and 55 minutes after it launched from Florida's Space Coast.

That's the fastest any American spacecraft has ever reached the orbiting lab, NASA officials said.

The previous record was 12 hours and 33 minutes, set in November 2024 by SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule during the robotic CRS-31 resupply flight. The fastest that astronauts had made the trip in a U.S. vehicle was 14 hours and 43 minutes, which was achieved by the Crew-11 mission in August 2025.

"We got lucky this time," Julianna Scheiman, director of NASA science and Dragon programs at SpaceX, said during Crew-13's post-launch press conference today.

"The space station was in an opportune spot in space, and the orbital mechanics, the physics of it all, worked out for it to be the shortest launch-to-docking time we've had to date," she said, adding that "this is close to the fastest it could be."

Crew-13 didn't set the overall speed record to the ISS, however — not even close. In May 2020, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying three astronauts reached the orbiting lab just 3 hours and 3 minutes after lifting off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Soyuz caught up to the ISS after just two orbits of Earth.

The Soyuz isn't faster or more powerful than a cargo or crew-carrying Dragon capsule. Rather, the difference in chase-down times comes down primarily to choices made by mission controllers; Russia tends to target more aggressive "fast-track" trajectories.

Crew-13 delivered four astronauts to the orbiting lab: NASA's Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency and Sergey Teteryatnikov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos. The quartet will live and work in space for the next six months.

They'll relieve the four astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-12 mission, which launched in mid-February. Those spaceflyers — NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, the European Space Agency's Sophie Adenot and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev — could return to Earth in their Crew Dragon capsule as soon as Monday (Oct. 5), according to NASA officials.

SpaceX just launched NASA's first mission numbered "13" in more than 50 years.

Crew-13, the 13th flight of the company's Crew Dragon capsule flying under the agency's commercial crew contract, lifted off at 11:10 a.m. EDT (1510 GMT) on Thursday (Oct. 1) from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

Commander Jessica Watkins and pilot Luke Delaney of NASA, mission specialist Joshua Kutryk with the Canadian Space Agency and mission specialist Sergey Teteryatnikov of Roscosmos are on their way to a rendezvous and docking with the International Space Station, beginning their planned five-and-a-half-month expedition.

Their time on the orbiting outpost will begin with a brief handover period with the outgoing Crew-12 astronauts, as would be expected for anyone familiar with the normal procession of numbers. But that was not always the case throughout NASA's history.

Triskaidekaphobia

NASA's first human space program to reach a 13th numbered flight was Apollo. The April 1970 mission was planned to be the third time U.S. astronauts landed on the moon, but as now is famously known, Apollo 13 was derailed by an inflight explosion that made the flight's primary goal returning Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise safely to Earth.

Both before and after the flight, the crew had little concern about their mission being numbered 13. They were aware of the superstition — that "13" was an unlucky number — but if they paid any attention to it, it was to make a joke.

"I never thought of it in a superstitious sense, that we would have a problem on 13," said Haise, the mission's lunar module pilot, in a 50th anniversary interview with collectSPACE.com in 2020. "I had no sense at all, nor do I relate to the launch time [13:13 CST] and all the other thirteens that people have tried to tie to things as being connected with the flight."

Jim Beggs reportedly felt differently. The NASA administrator when the agency reached its next 13th numbered mission in 1984, Beggs was against tempting fate.

"'There's not going to be [another] Apollo 13 or a Shuttle 13," he said, according to Bob Crippen, commander of the space shuttle's STS-41C mission, in a NASA oral history interview.

Giving in to triskaidekaphobia — the fear of the number 13 — Beggs ordered NASA to adopt a new but convoluted numbering system for all shuttle missions after STS-9.

"Hence, what would have been STS-13 became STS-41-C, where the '4' was the fiscal year [1984], the '1' was the launch site [Kennedy Space Center in Florida] and 'C' the order of launch [C was the third planned flight of the year]," said Crippen.

Beggs left office after the Challenger tragedy in 1986 and with him went the complex number and letter system. The first mission to return the space shuttle to flight — the 26th in the program's history — was designated STS-26.

It comes after 12

Before SpaceX's Crew-13, the closest NASA had come to having to consider the question was Expedition 13, the 13th crew to take up residency on the ISS. It was not, however, a solely American crew, with only a NASA astronaut, a Russian commander and German flight engineer aboard.

Other missions were not strictly the 13th, such as STS-113, which flew to the International Space Station in 2002, or were not American and so were not NASA's to decide. Russia's Soyuz TMA-13M and Soyuz MS-13 flew without so much as a black cat getting in their way.

"We were joking a lot about being number 113," Ken Bowersox, STS-113 commander, told the press at the time. To play it safe, though, the crew's mission patch used the Roman numerals (CXIII) instead.

As for Crew-13 astronauts, they seem be unfazed by reintroducing "13" to the order of U.S. missions, going so far as to style their official crew insignia after the emblem worn by the Apollo 13 astronauts.

"We took a lot of inspiration from the Apollo 13 crew as Crew-13," said Watkins, answering a question from the press gathered for their pre-launch arrival at the Kennedy Space Center. "We have a couple of nods in terms of just the Roman numerals, the golden color [and] the dragon looking upward."

"We really wanted to honor their legacy, honor their resilience and their grit and bring a little bit of that with us on our crew," she said. "We stand on the shoulders of giants."

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — After a more than two-week delay, NASA's next astronaut crew is finally in orbit.

SpaceX launched its Crew-13 astronaut mission for NASA today (Oct. 1) from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station here on Florida's Space Coast on a flight to the International Space Station (ISS) that will last about 8 hours — the fastest Crew Dragon flight ever to the orbiting lab.

"It was an incredible launch," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said during a post-launch press conference today. "This is an absolutely great start to Crew 13. We will be watching very closely, cheering them on throughout their great expedition."

Crew-13's Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 11:10 a.m. EDT (1510 GMT) from Launch Complex-40, carrying the astronaut quartet into low Earth orbit (LEO) aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon "Grace." It's the second launch for Grace, which also ferried the crew of the private Axiom-4 mission to the ISS last summer. It's also the second mission for Crew-13's commander, NASA's Jessica Watkins, who is, coincidentally, the first NASA astronaut to launch aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft for a second time.

Watson is joined by three spaceflight rookies: Crew-13 mission pilot Luke Delaney of NASA and mission specialists Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency and Sergey Teteryatnikov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos.

Their trip to LEO took less than 10 minutes. About 2.5 minutes after liftoff, the Falcon 9's second stage separated from its booster, known as B1101, and, in short succession, began executing its orbital insertion burn. Meanwhile, B1101 performed a simultaneous boostback burn to reset its trajectory for a return and touchdown at the landing zone adjacent to LC-40. An entry and landing burn followed, with a successful touchdown about 7 minutes and 40 seconds after liftoff. This was the third launch and recovery of B1101.

The second-stage engine burn ended about a minute later, wrapping up an orbital insertion maneuver that lasted roughly six minutes. Grace was released another a minute afterward to begin its chase of the ISS.

"Thanks for an amazing ride," Watkins told Mission Control shortly after that milestone was reached.

"They say that courage is grace under pressure, and the incredible teams that got us to orbit today truly embody that," she added. "Thank you for your hard work, perseverance, and courageous commitment to ensuring Grace was ready and safe to fly. We carry with us on this journey all of you who have supported us along the way, and we hope to make you proud."

Crew-13 won't have to wait long to begin rendezvous and docking procedures.

Typical Crew Dragon missions take 15 to 24 hours to catch up to the space station. For comparison, Russian launch profiles deliver the Soyuz crew capsule to the ISS anywhere between three hours to two days after liftoff. Grace will only have about 7 hours, 50 minutes on orbit before docking with the ISS, setting a new speed record for an American spacecraft.

"We got lucky this time," Julianna Scheiman, director of NASA science and dragon programs at SpaceX, said in the post-launch briefing. "The space station was in an opportune spot in space, and the orbital mechanics, the physics of it all, worked out for it to be the the shortest launch to docking time we've had to date."

The Crew-13 spaceflyers will call the ISS home for roughly six months. During their stint, they will take over ongoing station maintenance and research investigations, many of which focus on astronaut health and the long-term effects of microgravity on the human body. Other experiments on the Crew-13 docket include studies into stem-cell derived tissues to treat Parkinson's and heart disease, as well as the harvesting of produce in zero-g.

The astronauts' time aboard the ISS is expected to wrap up sometime next year, around February or March, when SpaceX launches NASA's Crew-14 astronauts to replace them. Similarly, Crew-13 will relieve the four Crew-12 astronauts. Crew-13's arrival will signal the beginning of departure preparations for the members of Crew-12, who launched to the ISS about 7.5 months ago — a slightly longer stay than originally anticipated.

Crew-12 was expected to return to Earth last month, but a delay in Crew-13 extended their mission by a few weeks. An oxidizer leak in Grace's propulsion system was discovered in August, prompting NASA and SpaceX to allot more time for prelaunch checkouts and tests.

NASA's Crew-13 coverage is scheduled to continue at 5:20 p.m. EDT (2020 GMT), with docking expected around 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT). Grace will dock with the forward-facing port on the station's Harmony module, where it will remain for the duration of the Crew-13 mission. Hatch opening is scheduled for 8:25 p.m. EDT (0025 GMT, Oct. 2), with short welcoming remarks by the crews to follow. You can watch all of this action here at Space.com.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 2:05 p.m. ET on Oct. 1 with quotes from the post-launch press conference.

SpaceX has a very big day planned.

Elon Musk's company is scheduled to launch three missions in a 13-hour span today (Oct. 1), a feat it has accomplished just once before.

The action will start at 11:10 a.m. EDT (1510 GMT) with the launch of the Crew-13 astronaut mission for NASA, which will head toward the International Space Station atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

Next up is the Transporter-18 rideshare mission, which will send 130 payloads to orbit, including a prototype satellite for Google's Project Suncatcher AI constellation.

Transporter-18 will fly on a Falcon 9 from the West Coast, lifting off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base during a 58-minute window that opens at 2:18 p.m. EDT (1818 GMT; 11:18 a.m. local California time).

The action shifts back to Florida's Space Coast for the final leg of the tripleheader. If all goes to plan, a Falcon Heavy rocket will launch the classified NROL-97 mission for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office from NASA's Kennedy Space Center tonight at 11:53 p.m. EDT (0353 GMT on Oct. 2).

You can watch all of these launches live. Space.com will stream the Crew-13 launch, courtesy of NASA, and SpaceX will webcast Transporter-18 and NROL-97 on its website.

The only other time that SpaceX has launched three missions in such a short timeframe was March 14-15 of 2025, when three Falcon 9 rockets launched in a 12.5-hour span.

The first two rockets lofted the Crew-10 astronaut mission and the Transporter-13 rideshare flight. The final Falcon 9 sent 23 of SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites to low Earth orbit.

Today's missions, by the way, come on the heels of the 14th test flight of SpaceX's Starship megarocket, which saw the vehicle reach Earth orbit for the first time ever. So the company is giving all of its active rockets a workout this week, if current schedules hold.

Boeing's Starliner spacecraft will fly astronauts again — but not until 2028.

If all goes according to plan, Starliner will conduct an uncrewed test flight to the International Space Station (ISS) this coming December or January, then carry astronauts up sometime in 2028, NASA announced in an update today (Sept. 28).

It's a vote of confidence for a vehicle that has experienced some serious setbacks on its three test flights to date.

Starliner lifted off for the first time in December 2019, on an uncrewed mission to the ISS called Orbital Flight Test (OFT). The capsule failed to meet up with the orbiting lab, however; it got stranded in the wrong orbit after suffering problems with its onboard timing system.

Starliner made it to the ISS on the uncrewed OFT-2, which launched in May 2022. But it wasn't a perfectly smooth ride: The Boeing vehicle overcame the failure of two of its orbital maneuvering and attitude control thrusters while it chased down the station.

Then came Crew Flight Test (CFT), Starliner's first-ever astronaut mission. CFT launched in June 2024, sending NASA's Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to the ISS for a planned 10-day stay. Shortly after Starliner deployed from its rocket, however, some issues cropped up — namely, helium leaks and the failure of five of Starliner's 28 reaction control system (RCS) thrusters.

As on OFT-2, Starliner powered through and made it safely to the ISS. But NASA eventually decided not to risk sending Williams and Wilmore back down to Earth on the vehicle. Starliner returned uncrewed in September 2024, and the two astronauts stayed on the ISS for six months beyond that, finally riding home in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule the following March.

Starliner has been grounded ever since, while SpaceX continues to rack up astronaut missions for NASA. The agency gave commercial crew contracts to both companies in 2014. SpaceX successfully flew its version of CFT in 2020 and is now wrapping up its 12th operational astronaut flight to the ISS for NASA; that mission will end shortly after SpaceX's Crew-13 launches this coming Thursday (Oct. 1).

NASA has long stressed the importance of having more than one private astronaut taxi up and running, however, so it has remained invested in Starliner's success — even after declaring CFT a "Type A mishap," the most serious kind, this past February.

And a joint Boeing-NASA team has addressed the issues that beset CFT, agency officials told us today. For example, the company traced the helium leaks to valve problems — specifically, degradation that occurred after exposure to nitrogen tetroxide, the oxidizer in Starliner's propulsion system.

"That is why the material of the seal was changed," Dana Weigel, manager, of NASA's Low Earth Orbit Program, said during a press conference today.

"We also realized we needed to select seals that were on the larger side of the tolerance spectrum," she added. "Boeing has implemented all of those changes on the Starliner-1 spacecraft already."

Starliner-1 is the upcoming uncrewed test flight to the ISS. Starliner-2 is the crewed mission that's targeted to lift off in 2028 — likely in the middle of that year, Boeing representatives said today.

Engineers have also taken steps to ensure that a CFT-like thruster anomaly doesn't afflict future Starliner flights.

"We determined that the crew module thruster anomaly is the result of corrosion," Weigel said.

"This is created by residual hydrazine propellant combined with atmospheric exposure — specifically, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — and so Boeing has put in place procedures to flush out the hydrazine, and also to flow a continuous purge to isolate those thrusters from the environment," she added.

Not all of these changes will be tested on Starliner-1, which explains why there will be such a long gap between it and Starliner-2.

"Following the flight [Starliner-1], NASA and Boeing will complete the service module thruster valve design modification," agency officials said in a statement today.

"Boeing also will implement other improvements across the spacecraft, including installation of new crew module thrusters, batteries and minor modifications to the parachute system for increased performance and reliability in support of system certification," they added.

We already know one person who's flying on Starliner-2: NASA announced today that veteran agency astronaut Woody Hoburg will command the mission. (There's no word yet on his crewmates.)

Hoburg expressed confidence in Starliner and the Boeing-NASA teams that will be working on the vehicle in the leadup to Starliner-2.

"I've flown a lot of types of aircraft, and let me tell you, Starliner is a pilot's spacecraft," he said during today's press conference. "Starliner gives the crew real capabilities to respond to off-nominal events. These were exercised during CFT, and along with our expert flight control team, the manual control capabilities on Starliner were critical to achieving a safe docking despite numerous thruster failures."

Boeing's commercial crew contract currently runs through Starliner-6. Starliner-1 through Starliner-4 will launch atop United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rockets, as OFT, OFT-2 and CFT all did. But the venerable Atlas V is out of production and on the road to retirement, so Starliner-5 and Starliner-6 will have a different rocket ride — ULA's new Vulcan Centaur.

Vulcan still hasn't been certified to launch crewed missions, however, so some work will be required on that end as well. And NASA will be footing some of the bill.

"So, both the spacecraft upgrades — including the thrusters and everything you've heard summarized today — plus the Vulcan certification, that is $359 million [dollars]," Weigel said during the press conference.

Today's Starliner update came on the heels of some other commercial crew news. On Sept. 19, NASA announced that it has awarded SpaceX $946 million to fly three additional ISS astronaut missions: Crew-15, Crew 16 and Crew-17, which are all expected to launch by 2030.

SpaceX plans to retire Crew Dragon and its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket around that same time. The company thinks its fully reusable Starship megarocket will be humming along by then, taking care of all its spaceflight needs.

That may well be the case: Starship reached orbit for the first time ever today, deploying the first 26 satellites for SpaceX's planned 100,000-strong Starlink V3 megaconstellation.

SpaceX's next astronaut mission for NASA has a new launch date at last.

The four-person Crew-13 flight to the International Space Station (ISS) is scheduled to launch on Oct. 1, the agency announced on Tuesday (Sept. 22).

Things had been up in the air since Aug. 29, when NASA announced that an oxidizer leak had been detected in the propulsion system of Crew-13's Dragon spacecraft. That leak took the original launch date of Sept. 12 off the table, and we didn't get another firm target until Tuesday.

If all goes according to the new plan, Crew-13 will launch at 11:10 a.m. EDT (1510 GMT) on Oct. 1 from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, riding a Falcon 9 rocket to low Earth orbit. It will arrive at the ISS roughly nine hours later, around 8 p.m. EDT (0000 GMT on Oct. 2).

You'll be able to watch all of this spaceflight action here at Space.com when the time comes.

Crew-13 will deliver four astronauts to the orbiting lab — NASA's Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, the Canadian Space Agency's Josh Kutryk and Sergey Teteryatnikov of Russia's federal space corporation Roscosmos. The quartet will live and work on the ISS for about seven months, performing a variety of scientific experiments and station maintenance work.

Crew-13 will relieve the four astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-12 mission, who have been living on the ISS since mid-February.

The two crews will overlap for a few days. Then Crew-12 — which consists of NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, the European Space Agency's Sophie Adenot and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, will come home.

No need for a quick spray of Windex to get a clear view of this situation.

There's a growing need for windows for rubbernecking space travelers, whether they're making suborbital hops, staying in Earth orbit or conducting far-flung sojourns to the moon and beyond.

Retrofire back decades ago when the first Mercury space capsule offered a tiny porthole for its single seat occupant, Alan Shepard. Similarly, the first human in space, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, had but a small window to take in the view.

Oddly, in those early years of pioneering space treks, nobody knew what microgravity would do to the human eye and a person's vision. Talk about floaters!

That aside, sightseeing in space has meant an evolution of safe and sound windows and tackling the engineering challenges to produce them. But what's the outlook ahead for space voyagers?

Earthgazing

"Based on my experience of interviewing professional and commercial astronauts, I would say that the windows are key to the 'Overview Effect' experience," said Frank White, who coined the phrase and is author of "The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1987).

White called attention to the deep shift in cognitive awareness that most space travelers undergo in viewing our planet from Earth orbit and beyond.

It's clear that, for NASA astronauts, transitioning from space shuttle missions to the International Space Station (ISS) was critical to a more meaningful opportunity to view Earth from a distance, White said.

"This shift intensified with the advent of the ISS Cupola, where astronauts spend a great deal of time ‘Earthgazing,'" he told Space.com.

Customer experience

White said that, because Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin have focused on having their suborbital space tourism customers experience the Overview Effect, "both companies have ensured great views from the windows of their spacecraft. As a result, commercial astronauts have had profound experiences, even though they are weightless and looking at the Earth only briefly."

It is no accident that SpaceX installed a special "cupola" on its Crew Dragon capsule for the Inspiration4 astronaut mission in September 2021, and it paid off, White observed. Anyone who doubts this fact, he said, should watch the video of the unveiling of that window by the Inspiration4 crew.

"The story goes that the engineers for the Mercury flights did not want the spacecraft to have windows," White said. "The astronauts insisted and eventually prevailed. Fortunately, their precedent continues to this day, to the benefit of the astronauts and the people of Earth. The Overview Effect is one of the most important 'spinoffs' of space exploration."

Human comfort

Similar in view is Samuel Coniglio IV, author of "Creature Comforts in Space: Designing Enjoyment and Sustainability for Off-World Living" (BookBaby, 2024).

Coniglio also points to that scene from the 1983 film "The Right Stuff," in which the original Mercury astronauts were arguing with the engineers for a need to see outside their capsule. After all, they were an elite set of pilots and may have needed to take manual control of their craft at some point.

"Just as plants and taking a shower play a critical role in human comfort, so do windows," said Coniglio. "Being able to see the vast heavens allows you to become one with the universe, and to see all the cool stuff going on outside. We can't just live in a box — we need to be part of the outside world as well."

Structural reliability

Lynda Estes is the spacecraft transparencies discipline lead at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. She's an engineering expert who has been integrating windows into crew-carrying spacecraft for decades.

Estes has worked with many vehicles during her NASA career — the space shuttles, the International Space Station, the Artemis program's Orion capsule and every private human-rated spacecraft developed by companies partnering with the agency's Commercial Crew Program.

Estes is an internationally sought-after resource for design, development, engineering, testing and operations for high-risk, human-rated pressure cabins in both aviation and spaceflight. She's the author of the governing NASA requirements document that ensures high structural reliability in spacecraft glass window designs.

Starting as a stress analyst for mechanisms, "windows are a whole new PhD," Estes told Space.com. "Glass is a brittle material. It breaks. That's what it likes to do. But it's also beautifully transparent as well."

Room with a view

In earlier NASA programs, windows were made of multiple panes of different types of glass. For example, the European-built Cupola on the ISS — offering the "best room with a view" — consists of six trapezoidal side windows and a circular top window. Each window consists of four panes for protection from astronaut-induced scratches, as well as outside dings from space debris.

The entire window, or the individual scratched or debris-pocked panes, can be replaced. Reinstating an entire window requires a "big, fancy ballet," said Estes — one that is well-choreographed, with an astronaut first fitting an external pressure cover over the window during a spacewalk.

Overall, the ISS Cupola serves as an observation and work area when the crew operates the station's robotic arms or observes visiting vehicles. But it's a lure during leisure time as well, as it affords astronauts extraordinary views of Earth and celestial objects.

Static fatigue

But there are troubling features of glass, too. For one, tiny flaws affect its strength. And glass actually loses structural capability over time, according to Estes.

"We call that static fatigue," she said, referring to cracks that grow microscopically under a load.

"We're working hard to remove glass because of those two features," Estes said, explaining that NASA wants to move to an all acrylic window design for the Orion spacecraft. "Acrylic, when seeing reentry temperatures, acts like a heat shield."

As a structural engineer, Estes advises that windows are worrisome.

"We come at it from, How do we keep everybody alive? Cutting a hole in the side of your pressure vessel and installing something like glass to replace that hole is a really poor choice," said Estes. "That's why we are trying to move contractors and our partners to acrylic. That is a much more structurally stable material."

Buying risk

One of the challenges with glass is that it produces shards when it breaks. "And the first place those shards want to go is to that human body that just went over to the window to see what happened," Estes pointed out.

With glass you are buying risk, said Estes. On the other hand, NASA has a written requirement, she said: "If you are going to put humans inside and send it to space, it must have a window."

Estes and her team are now providing guidance for spacecraft windows to be utilized for future moon operations, including the human landing systems for the Artemis program.

Back down here on Earth, does she clean windows at home?

"I do not," Estes responded.

City lights streak by as stars twinkle in the distance in this image captured from aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

What is it?

In a photo recently captured by NASA astronaut Anil Menon from the ISS, bars of city light can be seen streaking beneath the station — 262 miles (422 kilometers) beneath, to be exact. It's just one fleeting moment, but it showcases both the unnatural beauty of the city lights as well as the natural beauty of our planet and the stars in the distance.

The city lights beam from Central Asia. They're streaking because the ISS travels at about 17,500 mph (28,000 kph), and this image was captured as a long exposure. Auroras blaze on the lefthand side of the photo, and star trails sparkle across the blackness of space in the distance.

Why is it incredible?

All in one image, we can see streaking city lights, an extension of the ISS and its hardware, colorful auroras glowing green, red and orange, and star trails speckling the cosmos.

In just this one long-exposure image, Anil has captured the beauty of Earth, its human-populated cities, the universe we inhabit and the incredible technology we have managed to create and sustain in orbit.

It also remains incredible that, while so much amazing science and technical progress happens aboard the space station, it is also a place where art like this photograph can be made. Even in space, hundreds of miles above Earth, hurtling at thousands of miles per hour, astronauts working hard to make progress for humanity are able to find brief moments of transcendent beauty.

SpaceX will continue launching astronauts for NASA for at least another four years.

The agency just awarded Elon Musk's company $946 million to fly three more crewed missions to the International Space Station (ISS), a "period of performance" that runs through 2030.

"As part of the agency's Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract, this change brings the total missions for SpaceX to 17 and helps NASA to maintain access to the space station with two unique commercial crew industry partners," NASA officials said in a statement on Friday (Sept. 18).

The other commercial partner is Boeing, which, like SpaceX, got a CCtCap contract from NASA in 2014. The agency looked to these two companies to fill the crew-carrying shoes of the space shuttle, which had retired in 2011.

SpaceX has tackled the challenge with its Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule, which first launched astronauts to the ISS on the Demo-2 mission in May 2020. NASA certified that system for operational missions in November of that year, and SpaceX has completed 11 such astronaut flights to date.

It's still conducting the 12th, known as Crew-12, and is gearing up for the launch of Crew-13, which is expected to occur in early October. The new contract modification will take SpaceX through Crew-17 and bring the total value of its CCtCap contract to $5.92 billion.

Boeing has had a tougher time. Its Starliner capsule flew its first crewed test mission to the ISS in June 2024, and things didn't go according to plan; Starliner suffered thruster issues and other problems on the way to the orbiting lab, and the mission's two crewmembers — NASA's Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore — ended up coming back to Earth in a Crew Dragon in March 2025.

NASA still has not certified Starliner for operational astronaut missions, and it's unclear when the capsule will fly again. However, Starliner is still part of the agency's commercial crew plans, as Friday's update indicates.

NASA and its international partners currently plan to retire the ISS in late 2030 or early 2031 (though the U.S. Congress has pushed to extend operations through 2032).

The agency anticipates needing the services of crewed orbital spacecraft even after the ISS is dead and gone, however. It's encouraging the development of commercial space stations in low Earth orbit, which will be destinations for NASA astronauts and, perhaps, a range of other folks.

But Crew Dragon likely won't be around when these future stations get up and running. SpaceX plans to retire the capsule in 2030 or thereabouts, according to Ars Technica, giving its duties (and those of pretty much all of the company's other spaceflight systems) to its fully reusable Starship megarocket.

Russia's robotic Progress 96 cargo spacecraft met up with the space station today (Sept. 19).

Progress 96 launched atop a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday (Sept. 16), kicking off a three-day orbital chase of the International Space Station (ISS).

That chase came to an end today at 9:44 a.m. EDT (1344 GMT), when the freighter docked with the space-facing port of the ISS' Poisk module. The two spacecraft were flying 260 miles (418 kilometers) above the Black Sea at the time, according to NASA's docking webcast.

Progress 96 carried about 3 tons of food, fuel and other supplies for the occupants of the ISS.

There are currently seven of those folks: Jack Hathaway, Jessica Meir and Anil Menon of NASA, the European Space Agency's Sophie Adenot, and Pyotr Dubrov, Andrey Fedyaev and Anna Kikina of Russia's space agency, Roscosmos.

Progress 96 will stay attached to the ISS for about five months. It will then be loaded up with trash and sent to burn up in Earth's atmosphere.

This is the ultimate fate of most ISS resupply spacecraft — every Progress, HTV-X vehicle (which is built by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Cygnus (provided by Northrop Grumman). The only reusable freighter in the current fleet is SpaceX's Dragon capsule.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 9:55 a.m. ET on Sept. 19 with news of successful docking.

Pikachu is one of Earth's newest outer space ambassadors, thanks to a new partnership.

The European Space Agency (ESA) and The Pokémon Company International (TPCI) have teamed up to honor World Space Week 2026, which runs from Oct. 4 through Oct. 10.

To kick off this inaugural collaboration, a Pikachu toy floated aboard the International Space Station from April 11 to June 17, enjoying 67 days in orbit and completing 1,040 trips around our big blue marble. Pikachu joined seven human astronauts aboard the orbiting lab, including ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot, who came up on SpaceX's Crew-12 mission.

This pop culture fusion will also spawn temporary exhibitions and interactive programs this fall revolving around space and the Pokémon experience at ESA sites and major museums throughout Europe.

"Inspiring future generations is a key part of ESA's mission," ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said in a statement.

"Through this collaboration with Pokémon, we are unlocking new ways for people across Europe to connect with space through a unique and engaging experience," he added. "By taking space exploration beyond traditional settings, we hope to ignite curiosity, spark a sense of wonder about our universe and encourage people of all ages to discover opportunities that space offers for the future."

As with any promotional campaign, this out-of-this-world collaboration introduces exclusive merch. ESA x Pokémon apparel, accessories and collectibles will be available through the agency and Pokémon retail channels, including partner museum shops.

There's even a Pokémon GO in-game activation inspired by ESA x Pokémon, which will run from Oct. 4, 2026 to April 30, 2027. Trainers at participating science and space museums will discover unique Pokémon GO gameplay featuring the mysteries of space, including close encounters with Astronaut Pikachu.

The playful exhibition launches across ESA establishments and European museums during ESA Open Days 2026 at these venues:

• ESA Headquarters, Paris: Sept. 19-20, 2026
• ESRIN, Rome: Sept. 25, 2026
• ESTEC, Noordwijk, Netherlands: Sept. 26-27, 2026
• ESOC, Darmstadt, Germany: Oct. 2, 2026
• ESAC, Villanueva de la Cañada, Spain: Oct. 3, 2026
• ECSAT, Harwell, United Kingdom: Oct. 10, 2026

Incorporating themed Pokémon character panels, guests can explore important elements of Europe's space activities, discovering how Europe launches missions, aids ISS astronauts, studies the sun, and learns about the solar system and the broader universe.

"Every Pokémon journey begins with a sense of wonder about what lies beyond the world you know." Mathieu Galante, senior director of licensing at The Pokémon Company International, said in the same statement.

"From distant regions to encounters that reach into outer space, that spirit of discovery has always been part of being a Pokémon Trainer," he added. "Collaborating with ESA opens a new frontier for fans, bringing together the world of Pokémon and the wonder of space for visitors at locations across Europe."

After its main launch, the exhibition travels to a range of different venues and special events across Europe from October 2026 until April 2027. For a complete location list, go to ESA's official website here.

Europe's prototype spacesuit aboard the International Space Station (ISS) still needs some work after European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot performed its first fit and dexterity checks on orbit.

EuroSuit launched aboard the SpaceX CRS-34 Cargo Dragon mission, which lifted off May 15 and docked to the ISS about two days later with nearly 6,500 pounds (2,950 kilograms) of supplies and equipment. Adenot arrived on the ISS three months earlier, in February, as a member of the SpaceX Crew-12 mission. Her time with the suit gave European engineers their first astronaut feedback on the intravehicular activity (IVA) prototype in orbit, and she did not give a five-star review.

"I think there are still a lot of points that will be improved in the future," Adenot told Space.com on Sept. 16, during a call with reporters previewing the Crew-12 mission's impending return to Earth. "We are looking forward to the future steps."

EuroSuit was developed by the French Space Agency (CNES), the Institute of Space Medicine and Physiology (MEDES), spaceflight systems company Spartan Space, and sports clothing brand Decathlon. As the "I" in IVA suggests, EuroSuit is not designed for spacewalks. It's meant for use inside a spacecraft during the most critical phases of flight, specifically launch and landing, similar to the black-and-white spacesuits worn by astronauts who launch aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon.

One of the suit's biggest innovations is supposed to be its ease of use. EuroSuit is designed for astronauts to put on, without help from another crewmember, in less than two minutes, and take off in the same amount of time. This would be a big advantage in emergency situations when astronauts may need to don their suits quickly — for example, to deal with a spacecraft pressure leak or to evacuate the space station.

Adenot's on-orbit tests focused on the ergonomics of the suit, rather than full life-support performance. She was tasked with donning and doffing the suit and assessing its dexterity by handling small objects and manipulating a tablet's touchscreen.

EuroSuit fits into a broader European effort to build more independent capabilities in space. CNES says the project reflects Europe's ambition to be more autonomous in human spaceflight, with the French space agency focusing specifically on intravehicular suits.

"By relying on the exceptional expertise of our partners, we are prepared to deliver this type of suit when the time comes," Sébastien Barde, CNES deputy director for exploration and human spaceflight, said in a statement last year.

The project is coordinated by CNES, which brought together the aerospace, medicine and activewear expertise that went into EuroSuit's development. Spartan Space, the suit's primary contractor, created the overall design, with MEDES contributing biomonitoring systems for tracking astronaut vital signs and other data. Decathlon brought ergonomic insight into textiles meant for extreme environments.

Feedback from Adenot's ISS tests will help guide EuroSuit technicians toward a more informed architecture, which will include key systems like pressurization, atmospheric control, and communications that will be needed for the final design.

"This EuroSuit is at the very first step of its development," Adenot said. "Everything in the design of space systems goes incremental. I would say right now we are at the very beginning of its journey."

Leaving the International Space Station will be bittersweet for its outgoing crew, who’ve been living aboard the orbital lab since February performing maintenance and upgrades and carrying out dozens of microgravity research experiments.

The astronauts of SpaceX’s Crew-12 mission launched to the ISS on Feb. 13 and are now gearing up for their return to Earth. When exactly that might take place, however, is still up in the air, as their replacements don't yet have a launch date. NASA and SpaceX had targeted Sept. 12 for the liftoff of Crew-13, but have twice delayed that mission to allow additional time for preflight tests and data analysis. Now, NASA is targeting a Crew-13 launch no sooner than early October, according to a Sept. 16 statement from the space agency.

As is standard practice with ISS crew rotations, the astronauts of Crew-12 will remain aboard the station and continue a typical day-to-day schedule through a brief overlap period between crews once their replacements are safely aboard. In the meantime, the members of Crew-12 — NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev — are reflecting on their time in space and also looking forward to the comforts of Earth upon their return.

The quartet gathered in the station’s Kibo laboratory module for a call with reporters yesterday (Sept. 16) to discuss the past several months aboard the ISS and their upcoming trip home. It was the first time “in quite a while,” Meir said, that just the four Crew-12 astronauts found themselves together. They currently share the station with the three astronauts of Russia’s Soyuz MS-29 mission — NASA's Anil Menon and cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina.

Their coming together “really started evoking those memories of our trip up here and our ride on the [SpaceX] Dragon, and of course started to get us anticipating that ride home that hopefully we're going to have pretty soon around the corner,” Meir said on the call.

All four reflected on some of their most profound moments during their spaceflight and shared some of what they’re looking forward to once they’re back on Earth. “My biggest eureka moment happened just recently, on the final spacewalk that we did,” Meir said, referring to her Sept. 1 extravehicular activity (EVA). She performed a total of four EVAs during this current stint aboard the ISS, bringing her career total spacewalk tally to seven.

“It was the first time that I ever got to ride the Canadarm on a spacewalk,” Meir said, describing the EVA as a “full circle” moment. She helped fix the Canadarm during a previous spacewalk on this mission, “and then to ride it with these guys driving me around was the most incredible feeling,” she said.

Fedyaev recalled another notable spacewalk event. During the May 27 Roscosmos EVA that featured cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev, Fedyaev controlled the station’s European Robotic Arm (ERA) with both his comrades attached.

“The most [memorable] moment in my flight was the work with the ERA manipulator,” Fadyaev said. “We moved … two cosmonauts in one moment on the ERA from SM module to the MLM module,” he added, referring to Russia’s Zvezda Service Module and Nauka Multipurpose Laboratory Module. It was the first-ever time that two cosmonauts were transported simultaneously between modules using the ERA, and the experience stood out for Fadyaev, who skillfully handled the robotic arm’s controls.

Adenot pointed to the second of her two spacewalks as a point of pride during what is her first mission to space. She and Menon spent the majority of their Aug. 18 EVA removing a failed Space-to-Ground Antenna (SGANT) on the station’s Z1 truss, but stuck bolts and electrical connectors ate up so much time that they had to defer installing the spare until Aug. 25. Adenot recalled her relief when engineering teams on the ground confirmed the new SGANT’s functionality. “After two EVAs trying to fix it with Anil, it was a great thing to hear,” she said.

The Crew-12 astronauts also discussed some of the science they’ve helped carry out during their time on orbit. One of Hathaway’s proudest moments came when he heard the celebrations from teams in mission control over ISS communications channels after the crew completed upgrades to the station’s Cold Atom Lab, which facilitates quantum mechanics experiments.

“We spent, it must have been two or three hours trying to figure out how to get this part to fit into the slide it was supposed to fit in,” Hathaway said. “Hearing the cheers … over the space-to-ground loops when we finally got it properly installed and it was ready to do science was a pretty fun moment for me.”

Some of Meir’s favorite experiments took place in the Life Sciences Glovebox, including investigations involving neocartilage and stem cells. “Previous experiments have shown that the stem cells actually divide for longer, more continuously, in microgravity than they do on Earth,” Meir said. “So potentially that's something very novel that was discovered. And potentially, if it becomes cost-effective, we could produce stem cells up here to be used for targeted therapies back on Earth.”

As for what they’re looking forward to once they return to Earth, the answer is pretty much everything. “One of the things about living in space is, it's an expeditionary lifestyle,” Hathaway said. “We don't have a lot of selection of food. We don't have running water … So going home and being able to take a nice long hot shower will be very relaxing and very nice. And of course, I'm looking forward to seeing my family. But a hot shower is near the top of my list.”

Adenot, too, has her mind in the water. “I love water sports,” she said. “We don't have a lot of variety of sports [aboard the ISS], and obviously we don't have water sports. So I'm looking forward to these.”

“What I'm looking forward to most is seeing my three-and-a-half-year-old daughter,” Meir said, and added a few more things to her list. “I'm so looking forward to seeing nature again,” she said, “feeling the breeze on my face, the wind rustling through the leaves, experiencing all those things that we don't have up here. But I will very, very much miss being weightless all the time and the incredible views that we have.”

Like most test pilots, Jack Hathaway was always looking for a faster and more capable winged vehicle to fly. Even as a kid, he dreamed of being at the controls of the "coolest plane out there."

Unfortunately for him, he was a few years too young.

NASA's first space shuttle orbiter, OV-101 or "Enterprise," made its debut 50 years ago today (Sept. 17). Though only a prototype used for atmospheric and ground tests, Enterprise proved that a spacecraft could launch like a rocket and land as a glider, enabling the world's first reusable orbital platform.

Enterprise became a museum piece in 1985. Twenty-six years later, the three-surviving space-worthy orbiters followed, permanently landing in institutions on both U.S. coasts. Hathaway did not become an astronaut until a decade after that.

"It was definitely one of my goals to be able to fly something like it someday, and didn't quite make it. Maybe [had I] been a couple years older I would have, but I look back at it and it was pretty awesome," said Hathaway on Wednesday (Sep. 16), taking part in a press conference from on board the International Space Station. "It built this space station, which [people] have inhabited now for over 25 years, which is pretty awesome.

"We're thankful for the people that flew the space shuttle who came before us," he said.

'A great day'

"Would you now roll out orbiter 101, now christened the 'Enterprise,'" directed Jim Fletcher, then the NASA administrator, on Sept. 17, 1976, as he stood before an audience outside the vehicle's manufacturing plant in Palmdale, California.

As the crowd caught its first glimpses of the now familiar black-and-white winged spacecraft, a marching band performed the theme to "Star Trek." Most of the TV show's primary cast were there as NASA's invited guests. OV-101 was originally going to be named the "Constitution" before a grassroots letter writing campaign convinced the government to name its first space shuttle after the show's fictional starship.

"We are on the verge of a new era," said Barry Goldwater, the then-ranking minority member of the U.S. Senate's Committee on Aeronautics and Space Sciences. "As we witness today the rollout of the space shuttle, we are on the verge of a new era, not only in spaceflight, but in the lives of men and women and children all across this Earth."

"I submit that the space shuttle will present us with a remarkable opportunity to exploit the new frontier of space for the benefit of all mankind and to continue to expand our knowledge of the space environment in which we live," he said.

"What a great day that was in 1976!" recalled Star Trek's Spock, actor Leonard Nimoy, as the Enterprise arrived in New York for its display at the Intrepid Museum in 2012. "It was a great day for America, a great day for us to be connected to that history."

An inspiration

NASA astronaut Jessica Meir was born 10 months after Enterprise's reveal. Like Hathaway, her Expedition 74 and SpaceX Crew-12 crewmate, she grew up watching the space shuttle fly.

"I do think that the space shuttle program had a huge part in inspiring me," she said from on board the ISS in response to a question from collectSPACE. "When people ask me what made me want to be an astronaut, you know, there wasn't one moment that I describe, but I very vividly recall in the classrooms [watching] space shuttle launches."

In February 1977, five months before Meir was born, Enterprise made its first flight mounted to the top of NASA's Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. It flew a total of 16 times, of which five saw it separate from the 747 and land on its own on the dry lakebed at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Two pairs of two astronauts each took turns flying the tests: Fred Haise and Gordon Fullerton as one crew and Joe Engle and Richard Truly as the other.

Before turning Enterprise over to the Smithsonian, one of the last uses NASA had for the orbiter was to inspire and engage the public. The orbiter was the only one in history to be carried atop a Boeing 747 on a transatlantic tour of European countries and be displayed at the Paris Air Show in France in 1983. It was also exhibited at the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition in New Orleans.

"Seeing them when we were growing up as kids in the classroom, seeing it on the evening news — I think that was one of the things that really inspired me and got me interested in spaceflight and exploration in general," Meir said.

Russia launched a cargo mission toward the International Space Station today (Sept. 16), delivering the freighter spacecraft to orbit for a three-day rendezvous journey.

The robotic Progress 96 spacecraft lifted off atop a Soyuz rocket from the Russian-run Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan today at 9:33 a.m. EDT (1333 GMT).

From engine ignition through solar array deployment on the spacecraft, the Progress 96 launch was completely nominal. It was "a flawless launch," said NASA's Rob Navias during the mission's livestream this morning, with "an excellent climb to orbit by the Soyuz booster."

Progress 96 is loaded with about 3 tons of food, propellant and other supplies for the astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The freighter will deliver this cargo three days after launch, if all goes according to plan. You'll be able to watch rendezvous and docking activities when the time comes.

The freighter will remain docked to the orbiting lab for about five months. It will then be loaded up with trash and sent down to a fiery death in Earth's atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean.

The Progress 94 spacecraft met this fate on Sept. 7, departing from ISS' Poisk module to make room for Progress 96.

Progress is one of four spacecraft that fly operational cargo missions to the ISS these days, along with Japan's HTV-X, SpaceX's Dragon capsule and Northrop Grumman's Cygnus. All but Dragon are expendable, burning up in our air when their time in orbit is up.

There are currently seven people living aboard the ISS — NASA astronauts Jack Hathaway, Jessica Meir and Anil Menon; the European Space Agency's Sophie Adenot, who last month became the first French woman ever to perform a spacewalk; and Pyotr Dubrov, Andrey Fedyaev and Anna Kikina of the Russian space agency Roscosmos.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 10 a.m. ET on Sept. 16 with news of successful launch.

NASA astronaut Jessica Meir just shared some tips for controlling curls in the tough environment of microgravity — and it was a big deal for curly-haired people like me.

Meir's hair-care advice came Wednesday (Sept. 9) in a 5.5-minute video she posted to X from the International Space Station (ISS), where everything floats and "where curls are even more free to be what they want to be," the Expedition 75 astronaut wrote.

And if you think all this talk about hair care sounds frivolous, take it from a fellow curly: the representation matters. More on that in a moment, but first, let's see how Meir takes care of her curly hair in microgravity.

According to Meir, washing in orbit requires no-rinse shampoo, especially focusing on the scalp, where sweat and salt build up. She has less access to hair products than we do here on Earth, as you would imagine, so she keeps it simple: a careful squeeze of her pouch of water, then working the expelled water along her hair roots, and also rubbing it on the scalp. Meir then uses a "dedicated T-shirt" to dry her hair, which she described as thick as well as curly.

In between treatments, Meir avoids brushes (for pretty obvious reasons of frizz) and uses her hands and fingers instead to "work" her hair. Luckily, humidity is not much of an issue on the ISS, but she does use leave-in conditioner: "My Earthly 3a curls become more like 3c," she said. Meir has been on the ISS since February, and she said she's looking forward to having an actual shower when she gets back home to Earth.

OK, so about that representation. My editor asked me to talk not only about Meir's video but also my own connections to her words, which brings up some teenage angst. In the 1990s, I was (then, as now) a curly-haired person who was just (bitterly) old enough to remember all the curly rock stars of my childhood in the '80s. But dare to wear curls in my school in like, 1994? As if! Lame!

All the young women around me were rocking the flat-haired "Rachel from 'Friends'" look that would take thick-haired curlies like me forever to achieve. I couldn't be bothered — I like sleep! Which apparently was enough for my classmates (of any gender) to deliver unprintable and sometimes racist insults, or to hide their faces from me because I was "ugly," or to spread rumors that I carried hair lice, and so forth. I couldn't believe it; other kids were sporting awesome and stand-out 'dos like mullets and mushroom cuts, so what was wrong with curls?

To be clear, as a 40-something I now have perspective: I later learned that some of my classmates had complex (even tragic) issues of their own contributing to the bullying, and I have no idea how other kids in my classes fared with their hairdos. The real lesson learned is that representation matters, inclusivity is possible and inclusivity matters across multiple dimensions. While looks may not sound important, at first glance, they really are: curly hair is a dimension of diversity. (I know I am just one female voice, with white U.K. ancestry; other people with curly hair will have different perspectives.)

So, back to the curly-hair-space-care routine: as a fellow curly, can I confirm that it stands up? Yes it does. While I'm no astronaut like Meir, I can offer you an analog: the two weeks I spent in 2014 at the Mars Society's Mars Desert Research Station in rural Utah, during which my crew was able to shower every two days, if we were lucky.

On that simulated Red Planet mission, I also used no-rinse shampoo to save on water, only combed (never brushed) my hair when it was wet, and mostly wore it bun-style to protect the curls in the meantime. While it took me two showers to feel normal when I at last reached a hotel room with running water, my hair bounced — so to speak — back quickly. That shows my curls are resilient, and since my 20s I've felt lucky to have them; my hair takes me a minimum of work or styling besides a quick wash and comb, and — as long as I don't touch my hair after it's wet — it's happy.

And to all those kids teasing me back in the day, allow me a moment of moon joy: NASA's Christina Koch sported curly hair during NASA's Artemis II lunar mission earlier this year. Koch herself, by the way, later spoke about her moon-mission braids at an event in my literal city in Canada (as, speaking of representation, I'm Canadian). Yes, of course there was more to this historic mission than hair: I covered Artemis II's science and activities at numerous in-person events for three-plus years, and some of its crew members for 17 years. But to see curls on a person looping around the moon? Bonus.

Every curly-haired person's experience is different, however, so I'd like to hear from you. There's a comment section with this article to chat about microgravity (or analog) curly-hair care, other curly-haired astronauts, or similar topics. Let us know your thoughts.

Frank Culbertson had a birds-eye view of one of the most memorable and tragic events in American history.

The NASA astronaut was the only American off of Earth on Sept. 11, 2001. He was circling the planet aboard the International Space Station (ISS) when terrorists flew commercial jets into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing more than 2,700 people.

The ISS passed over New York shortly after the attacks took place, so Culbertson saw the devastation from an eerie remove. He shared his thoughts with Mission Control at NASA's Johnson Space Center in real time, chronicling the tragedy like no one else could.

"We could see New York City and the smoke from the fires," Culbertson said. "Our prayers and thoughts go out to all the people there and everywhere else here — I'm looking up and down the East Coast to see if I can see anything else — and to the people in Washington."

Terrorists hijacked four commercial planes on 9/11, flying two of them into the World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Passengers on the fourth plane overpowered the hijackers, forcing it to crash in a field in Pennsylvania rather than hit the terrorists' intended target, which was likely the U.S. Capitol building or the White House.

"I hope that the people responsible are caught and brought to justice as soon as possible," Culbertson added. "But first, our prayers and condolences to all involved. And I just wanted the folks to know that their city still looks very beautiful from space. I know it's very difficult for everybody in America right now, and I know folks are struggling very hard to to deal with this and recover from it. But the country still looks good, and, for New Yorkers, your city still looks great from up here."

Culbertson gave a more complete accounting of his thoughts in an open letter, which he published a day after the attacks.

"The world changed today. What I say or do is very minor compared to the significance of what happened to our country today when it was attacked," he wrote.

"It's horrible to see smoke pouring from wounds in your own country from such a fantastic vantage point," Culbertson added. "The dichotomy of being on a spacecraft dedicated to improving life on the Earth and watching life being destroyed by such willful, terrible acts is jolting to the psyche, no matter who you are."

Culbertson arrived at the ISS on Aug. 12, 2001 aboard the space shuttle Discovery along with cosmonauts Vladimir Dezhurov and Mikhail Tyurin. The trio comprised Expedition 3, the third-ever crewed mission to the orbiting lab, which ran through December of that year.

We're now up to Expedition 75, and there have been no breaks: The ISS has been continuously staffed by rotating astronaut crews since November 2000.

Expedition 3 was Culbertson's third and final spaceflight. He retired from NASA in August 2002 and went to work in the private sector. Among other roles, he led human spaceflight efforts at Orbital Sciences Corp., which built the Cygnus ISS resupply spacecraft. Cygnus still flies today, for the aerospace giant Northrop Grumman, which bought Orbital Sciences in 2018.

Culbertson, 77, retired from Northrop Grumman in 2018. He currently serves on the board of directors of the nonprofit Space Foundation, among other roles.

You can read more about Culbertson's experiences on NASA's dedicated 9/11 page. That page also outlines how the agency helped emergency managers assess the damage in New York City just after the attacks and discusses some of the ways NASA has honored 9/11 victims and their families over the years.

For example, NASA flew nearly 6,000 small American flags on the STS-108 mission of the space shuttle Endeavour, which launched on Dec. 5, 2001 and landed 12 days later.

"Students working out of Johnson Space Center in Houston assembled commemorative packages that included the space‑flown flags, which were then presented to victims' families," NASA officials wrote about the project. "Distribution began on June 14, 2002 — National Flag Day — during a ceremony at the American Museum of Natural History’s Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York."

Celebrations of Star Trek's 60th anniversary made it all the way to the final frontier.

Among the science and supplies delivered to the International Space Station (ISS) for European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Sophie Adenot's mission on orbit was a small piece of memorabilia to honor one of the most influential pop culture phenomena that has continually called for humanity to turn its gaze to the stars. Adenot carried a small Starfleet badge from one of Star Trek's newest series, Strange New Worlds, which she wore during a video posted by ESA and Star Trek.

"It's a small object, but it carries something bigger: sixty years of a story that taught us to dream about exploring together," ESA said in a separate post picturing the golden badge floating in front of the station's large Cupola windows. "From the crew of the USS Enterprise to the crews on the International Space Station, the mission hasn't really changed. Explore. Discover. Do it together," the post says.

Adenot launched to the ISS aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule on NASA's Crew-12 mission to the orbital lab on Feb. 13, and is serving as flight engineer for ISS Expedition 75. It's her first launch to space, and is set to wrap up soon, pending the launch and arrival of SpaceX's next Dragon spacecraft carrying the astronauts of NASA's Crew-13 mission, expected within just a few weeks.

In Adenot's video, she is seen donning the Starfleet badge on her ESA-issue ISS shirt, floating in ESA's Columbus laboratory module. "For me, exploration and science are about curiosity and cooperation, daring to go a little farther together, learning from what we discover and build, and turning that knowledge into a better future for everyone," she said.

Star Trek, too, has resonated with similar themes. Since its premiere on Sept. 8, 1966, the show has told stories that place social issues and cultural conflicts front and center in a way that 'demonstrates the best traits of humanity. It depicts, in its creator Gene Roddenberry's view, an idyllic version of humanity he believed was truly achievable through the act of simply accepting one another.

"The whole show was an attempt to say that humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate, but to take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in life forms," Roddenberry said in the 1976 album The Star Trek Philosophy. "If we cannot learn to actually enjoy those small differences — take a positive delight in those small differences between our own kind — here on this planet, then we do not deserve to go out into space and meet the diversity that is almost certainly out there."

ESA celebrated that philosophy, and the potential it holds for humanity. "Science fiction imagines the future. We build it," ESA's post said. "From the crew of the USS Enterprise to the crews on the International Space Station, the mission hasn't really changed. Explore. Discover. Do it together."

Like most of their compatriots here on terra firma, the three Americans living off Earth will get to put their feet up today (Sept. 7).

NASA astronauts Jack Hathaway, Jessica Meir and Anil Menon will get Labor Day off aboard the International Space Station (ISS), the agency said on Friday (Sept. 4). European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, the first French woman ever to perform a spacewalk, will also be off duty.

However, the three Russian cosmonauts living on the ISS will have to clock in as usual.

The trio — Pyotr Dubrov, Andrey Fedyaev and Anna Kikina — "will be busy monitoring the Progress 94 resupply spacecraft when it undocks on Monday, packed with trash and obsolete gear, from the Poisk module," NASA officials said in an update on Friday.

"It will be replaced by the Progress 96 resupply spacecraft after it launches from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome on Sept. 9 for an automated docking two days later to Poisk’s vacated port," they added.

Adenot, Feyaev, Hathaway and Meir arrived at the ISS in mid-February on SpaceX's Crew-12 mission. Dubrov, Kikina and Menon are relative newcomers, reaching the station aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on July 14.

NASA astronauts on long-duration missions to the ISS generally work a relatively normal schedule, getting weekends and major holidays off. Such downtime is crucial to mission success, as it helps the spaceflyers stay happy, healthy and productive.

They may not be able to mark the holidays in exactly the same ways we do here on Earth, however. For example, the astronauts won't be grilling any hamburgers or hot dogs today, as open flames are verboten on the ISS.

As today's schedule shows, international crewmates do not always have the same days off in orbit. But they try to celebrate major holidays like Christmas together, both to cement the bonds that exist between them and to take the sting out of being so far away from family and friends.

Two astronauts replaced a spacecraft docking aid and a video camera during a successful spacewalk outside of the International Space Station on Tuesday (Sept. 1).

NASA astronaut Jessica Meir and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Sophie Adenot got through most of the tasks set out for them even in light of Adenot's spacesuit developing a mobility issue late in the extravehicular activity (EVA), which lasted six hours and 49 minutes.

After beginning the spacewalk from the U.S. Quest airlock at 8:40 a.m. EDT (1240 GMT), Meir and Adenot set about the first and most important activity of the outing: replacing the planar deflector on the forward port of the station's Harmony Node 2. The retroreflector is used to support navigation during rendezvous and docking operations by visiting spacecraft. The older reflector that they replaced had become coated in thruster residue from earlier spacecraft arrivals and departures.

They also replaced the Camera Port 3 (CP3) high-definition (HD) camera on the station's truss.

"And it's off!" reported Meir after freeing the spent camera assembly that was swapped out for spare. Her words were met by applause in Mission Control at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"That worked, great!" she said.

From there, Adenot headed off to continue an ongoing scientific study by swabbing areas on the exterior of the airlock and her gloves for possible microorganisms. Meir, meanwhile, rode one end of the Canadarm2 robotic arm to a site near the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), torquing 46 bolts in preparation for future maintenance of the particle physics detector.

Meir also relocated power and thermal jumper cables and an articulating portable foot restraint for use on a later spacewalk.

There were some other tasks planned, time permitting, but toward the end of the EVA, Adenot reported losing mobility in her left shoulder joint. Erring on the side of caution, Mission Control called for Adenot to wait where she was until Meir could follow her back to the airlock.

Once there, Meir was able to unzip a portion of Adenot's extravehicular mobility unit's (EMU's) upper arm assembly to inspect what was happening. In doing so, she freed the kink that had limited Adenot's motion.

"I think it was where the cable got caught in between the shoulder MLI [multi-layer insulation] and the rotation [joint]. I don't think it was held up by anything but some friction," said Meir.

The two Expedition 75 crewmates then proceeded back into the airlock to complete the EVA at 4:29 p.m (2029 GMT).

Tuesday's spacewalk was Meir's seventh and Adenot's third. Meir, who has a total of 49 hours and 22 minutes on EVA, now ranks third among all women astronauts at NASA for total number of spacewalks. She trails only Peggy Whitson with 10 and Suni Williams at 9.

Adenot now has spent 19 hours and 42 minutes working in the vacuum of space.

This spacewalk was the 284th supporting the International Space Station's assembly, maintenance and upgrades. It was the seventh spacewalk this year, fifth EVA for Expedition 75 and the sixth all-female spacewalk in history.

Repairing an engineering marvel like the International Space Station is no easy feat by itself, but it's even more impressive when it's done 250 miles (400 kilometers) up.

What is it?

In this photograph, European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Sophie Adenot works on the exterior of the International Space Station on Aug. 25, 2026.

The photo was taken while Adenot and NASA astronaut Anil Menon were conducting a 6.5-hour spacewalk, or extravehicular activity (EVA), to replace one of two Space-to-Ground antennas on the outside of the ISS.

This was the second EVA that Adenot and Menon performed to replace the antenna. During a previous spacewalk a week earlier, the pair ran out of time before the new antenna could be installed.

With that first spacewalk, Adenot became the first woman from France to ever conduct an EVA.

Why is it incredible?

It can be hard to conceptualize just how high up the ISS orbits until you see a photo like this one; few people on Earth have ever flown as high as 250 miles (400 km), so that altitude can feel a bit abstract. Seeing an astronaut like Adenot clinging to the space station with the clouds and blue oceans of Earth below puts things into perspective.

At that height, the ISS orbits at quite a high rate of speed. The orbital laboratory zips around Earth at 17,500 mph (28,000 kph), meaning it circles the planet 16 times a day. This photo was taken on day 194, or orbit 3010, of Adenot's mission, which began in February when she launched to the ISS as part of NASA's Crew-12 mission.

Two astronauts will conduct history's sixth all-female spacewalk today (Sept. 1), and you can watch it live.

NASA's Jessica Meir and Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency will venture outside the International Space Station (ISS) at around 8:30 a.m. EDT (1230 GMT) on an excursion expected to last about 6.5 hours.

You can watch it here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly via the agency. Coverage will start at 7:00 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT).

During today's spacewalk, Meir and Adenot "will replace a retroreflector on the forward port of the space station's Harmony module to support spacecraft navigation during rendezvous and docking operations," NASA officials said in a media advisory.

"After installing the reflector, the crew will work to install jumper cables for the data-relay systems, prepare the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer's radiator for future maintenance, and replace a high-definition camera on the station's truss," they added.

(The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is a $2 billion particle physics experiment mounted to the exterior of the ISS that studies cosmic rays and hunts for mysterious dark matter, among other tasks.)

Adenot will be "crew member 1" on today's spacewalk and will wear a suit with red stripes, NASA officials said. Meir will wear an unmarked suit and serve as "crew member 2."

It will be the third spacewalk for Adenot, who two weeks ago became the first French woman ever to perform an extravehicular activity (EVA). It will be the seventh for Meir, which will put her third among female NASA astronauts behind Peggy Whitson (10 EVAs) and Suni Williams (nine).

There have been just five all-female ISS spacewalks to date, and Meir has been part of three of them — the first three, in fact. She conducted those with fellow NASA astronaut (and Artemis II crewmember) Christina Koch on Oct. 18, 2019, Jan. 15, 2020 and Jan. 20, 2020.

SpaceX's next astronaut mission to the International Space Station won't launch on Sept. 12 after all.

That flight, known as Crew-13, has been delayed due to an oxidizer leak in the propulsion system of SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft, NASA announced on Saturday (Aug. 29).

"Joint NASA and SpaceX teams are performing additional tests and data review and will complete any necessary rework prior to launch," NASA officials wrote in an update on Saturday. "A new target date will be announced once available."

Crew-13 will launch atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

As its name suggests, it will be the 13th operational astronaut mission SpaceX flies to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA. (The company also conducted a crewed test flight to the orbiting lab, called Demo-2, which launched in May 2020.)

Crew-13 will send NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney of NASA, the Canadian Space Agency's Josh Kutryk, and Sergey Teteryatnikov of Russia's federal space corporation Roscosmos to the ISS for a seven-month stay.

"We expect a very busy mission with lots of station maintenance, both internal and external, with a few EVAs [extravehicular activities, or spacewalks] on the docket," Watkins said during an Aug. 3 press conference.

There will also be "visiting vehicle capture and stowage operations, lots of science — very interesting science experiments that will be flying with us as well — and plenty of outreach," she added.

SpaceX just launched a high-profile mission for NASA, sending the agency's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope into the final frontier on Sunday (Aug. 30) atop a Falcon Heavy rocket.

And the company is gearing up for an important test flight of Starship, the next-generation megarocket that it thinks will revolutionize spaceflight. The upcoming liftoff, the 14th to date for Starship, will see the rocket reach Earth orbit for the first time, if all goes to plan. SpaceX is thought to be targeting mid-September for Starship Flight 14.

Jonny Kim is leaving NASA to continue his military career.

The 42-year-old astronaut, who has one of the most jaw-dropping resumes of any person alive, is departing today (Aug. 27) after nine years with the agency. He has one mission under his belt, a long-duration flight to the International Space Station (ISS).

"Jonny has been an integral part of the agency, and his immeasurable impact will be felt for generations to come," Vanessa Wyche, director of NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, said in a statement today. "From advancing groundbreaking science to inspiring the next generation, Jonny has been an incredible source of inspiration to our nation. His exceptional talent, determination, and grit will leave a lasting legacy at NASA."

NASA picked Kim as part of its 2017 astronaut class, the 22nd in the agency's history. He and his 11 fellow selectees nicknamed themselves "The Turtles."

Kim was already incredibly accomplished before he got the NASA nod. He's a physician with a medical degree from Harvard. He served in the U.S. military, as a dual-designated naval aviator and flight surgeon as well as a Navy SEAL — a commando trained to conduct special operations on sea, air and land (hence the acronymic name).

"Over the course of more than 100 combat operations, he served as a medic, sniper, navigator and point man, earning the Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat 'V,' and numerous additional commendations," NASA officials said in the same statement.

After completing his mandatory two years of NASA astronaut training, Kim served as a CAPCOM ("capsule communicator") at JSC, relaying information between Mission Control and crewmembers on the ISS.

"Kim also contributed to Artemis program development through his work in the astronaut exploration branch, leading the astronaut crew operations branch, and serving as increment lead for Expedition 65," NASA officials said in the same statement. "His experiences as a Navy SEAL, physician and naval aviator provided unique perspectives in mission operations and crew support."

In April 2025, Kim got the chance to go to space himself. He launched to the ISS aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft along with Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky.

The trio lived and worked in space for 245 days, circling Earth 3,920 times and traveling a total of nearly 104 million miles (167 million kilometers), according to NASA. During that time, Kim conducted a variety of scientific experiments that could advance technological development and aid space exploration down the road.

Kim, Ryzhikov and Zubritsky returned to Earth in December, touching down in their Soyuz on the steppe of Kazakhstan .

Kim isn't walking off into the sunset now. Far from it: He's going back to active duty, "to finish out the remainder of his military career within naval aviation training," according to NASA.

"Contributing to space exploration and serving NASA has been the honor of a lifetime," Kim said in the same NASA statement.

"Throughout my career, I’ve learned that beyond the missions, the training, and the hardware, success always comes down to the people," he added. "They are our greatest asset, and leading with love and empathy is how we achieve the impossible. I look forward to carrying my commitment to service, my enduring love for space and technology, and the hard-earned lessons of this past decade into my next chapter to make a meaningful impact on humanity’s future."

Kim isn't the only astronaut to hang up his spacesuit in 2026. NASA's Mike Fincke stepped away this year, as did Canadian Jeremy Hansen, who was one of the four crewmembers on NASA's Artemis II flight around the moon.

"Houston, we have a working comm link again."

Thanks to the efforts of two astronauts, such a call is possible again using one of two Space-to-Ground antennas outside the International Space Station (ISS). The pair finished the replacement of a faulty dish assembly during a spacewalk on Tuesday (Aug. 25).

Anil Menon of NASA and Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency (ESA), who previously removed a faulty dish during a spacewalk on Aug. 18, installed a spare in its place and moved the broken assembly from a temporary to more permanent storage location along the station's backbone truss.

With Menon positioned at the end of the Canadarm2 robotic arm and Adenot traversing by handrails to join him, the two Expedition 75 crewmates first retrieved a spare Space-to-Ground Antenna (SGANT) from an external stowage position. Menon and the spare dish were then maneuvered to the Z-1 truss, where it was mounted and connected to the station's power and data systems.

Menon and Adenot then retrieved the faulty antenna, which they had stowed on the Z-1 truss during the prior spacewalk. Menon (on the arm) moved it to external stowage platform-3 (ESP-3) on the starboard side of the truss.

The replacement work became necessary after the SGANT ceased being able to track NASA's data and relay satellites, rendering it unusable, beginning last November. A second antenna has been in use since, continuing the transmission of voice and critical data, but this repair re-established redundancy to the system.

"On behalf of CAPCOM and I, we're going to count down like a bolt: '3, 2, 1… You just saved the video dish, you just saved the video dish,'" sang astronaut Anne McClain from Mission Control at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, parodying the The Buggles' 1979 hit "Video Killed the Radio Star."

"Oh my god, it is hard to top that," replied Menon, who could be heard laughing along with Adenot. "I want to thank the entire team on executing this complex, time-critical operation successfully."

Tuesday's spacewalk began at 8:27 a.m. EDT (1227 GMT) and was completed exactly 6.5 hours later, at 2:57 p.m. EDT (1857 GMT).

The extravehicular activity (EVA) was the 283rd in support of ISS assembly, maintenance and upgrades. It was Menon's third EVA, increasing his total spacewalking time to 19 hours and 20 minutes. It was the second time that Adenot worked in the vacuum of space, raising her time on EVA to 12 hours and 53 minutes after becoming the first woman and fifth citizen of France to perform a spacewalk.

This was the sixth outing from the International Space Station this year, the third EVA for Expedition 75 and the 98th spacewalk using U.S. extravehicular mobility unit (EMU) spacesuits at the station.

Two astronauts will do some repair work outside the International Space Station today (Aug. 25), and you can watch the action live.

NASA's Anil Menon and Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency will conduct a spacewalk today (Aug. 25) to replace a space-to-ground-antenna. The extravehicular activity (EVA) is expected to start around 8:35 a.m. EDT (1235 GMT) and last 6.5 hours.

You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly via the space agency. Coverage will start at 7:00 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT).

This will be the third spacewalk for Menon and the second for Adenot, the first French woman ever to conduct an EVA. Her history-making first excursion occurred on Aug. 18, when she and Menon removed a failed space-to-ground antenna, a relay link that enables high-speed communications between the International Space Station (ISS) and Mission Control at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The duo ran out of time before they could install a replacement antenna, however. They'll finish the job today, if all goes to plan.

"If time allows, Menon and Adenot also will attempt a get‑ahead task to replace a retroreflector on the forward port of the space station's Harmony module, which will improve navigation data for visiting spacecraft," NASA officials wrote in a spacewalk preview.

Adenot arrived at the ISS in February as part of SpaceX's Crew-12 mission, which also includes NASA astronauts Jack Hathaway and Jessica Meir and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.

Menon came aboard on July 14, making the trip on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft along with cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina. Menon performed his first-ever spacewalk on Aug. 6, with Meir.

Menon will be "crewmember 1" on today's spacewalk, and Adenot will be "crewmember 2." The EVA will be the 283rd in the history of the ISS, which has been continuously occupied by rotating astronaut crews since November 2000.

HOUSTON — What does NASA's astronaut training hub look like these days, as the agency aims to bring more commercial space stations into the fold?

It's an interesting mix of government and private companies, of space agency personnel and of contractors, all working together to keep U.S. and international astronauts flying through the end of the ISS — currently expected around 2030 — and the new breed of commercial space stations expected to take its place.

Canadian reporters like myself were invited on a tour of Johnson Space Center (JSC) on Aug. 4 ahead of the launch of SpaceX Crew-13, which launches no earlier than Sept. 12. Canadian Space Agency astronaut Josh Kutryk is a mission specialist on the Crew Dragon spacecraft, which also includes NASA commander Jessica Watkins, NASA pilot Luke Delaney and Roscosmos mission specialist Teteryatnikov.

The ISS remains an active program for at least a few years; NASA managers reiterated in a press conference here on Aug. 3 that they are still targeting an end-of-operations in about 2030 — but they are prepared to extend the lifetime of the station if directed by Congress (which wants to keep going at least another two years).

The space station has had a leak on the Russian side for several years, and astronauts recently and briefly sheltered in a Crew Dragon during discussions of a fix. At the press conference, NASA added the situation is under control as Roscosmos agreed to essentially seal off that area. Major station systems, they added, are otherwise in good health.

But as spaceflight takes planning, teams are already thinking about "lessons learned" when the ISS retires for a new generation of mission planners, which would include an even greater focus on companies. NASA's Commercial LEO (Low Earth Orbit) Destinations or CLD program aims to have private space stations for astronauts by the time the ISS retires, and handed out early-stage contracts valued at about $415 million in 2021 to three teams led by Nanoracks, Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman. After NASA briefly considered changing the program's scope, after input from industry a new request for proposals advancing CLD should be out soon.

Meanwhile, companies like Vast Space have their own self-funded modules almost ready to fly, while Bigelow Aerospace has an inflatable module on ISS that is being tested, long-duration wise, to make sure the concept holds up for a future free-flying destination. No matter who hosts astronauts, however, NASA officials on the tour said they are prepared to offer expertise and help — and there is no other visible demonstration of that expertise to the public than the ISS Mission Control, which is often shown live on NASA+ during a selection of space station operations.

Mission Control: 'We have all of those disciplines'

The Mission Control building holds several dedicated control rooms for different mission purposes, including an historic Apollo control center and another room alternately used for Boeing Starliner and Artemis missions. I've been lucky enough to visit all of these in the past. Our only stop in the building Aug. 4, however, was the iconic ISS mission control.

On screen at the front of the room, the Expedition 75 astronauts were awake and active, occasionally zooming by a camera mounted inside the Destiny U.S. lab sandwiched between two station "nodes" leading to other modules. Flight director Diane Dailey told us the controllers are watching for things like if the astronauts are loaded down with equipment, which indicates that would not be a good time to call unless urgent. "We usually have that live camera view just up for awareness. It just helps us understand," she said.

Speaking of calls, an open laptop screen, deliberately positioned within view of the camera, showed all "green" on the comms channels—which helps ground controllers figure out if the crew can hear them, as the station flies in and out of satellite and ground station views all the time. (A flight map, also at the front of the room, also allows for tracking the station and its communications capabilities as it flies around the world.)

While it was hard not to keep gazing at these screens, what was almost as mesmerizing was watching the quiet group of ISS controllers positioned in front of their own laptops and occasionally holding side conversations about their systems. SpaceX now has its own Mission Control in California for its spacecraft, while Boeing chose to integrate theirs with NASA's. Whatever pathway companies choose, however, Mission Control will remain an important example of "division of labor" for future space stations.

"You're going to see different consoles that specialize in different aspects of spacecraft operations," Dailey said. "I like to kind of think of it in terms of, 'What are all the capabilities you'd need on any given spacecraft', right? You'd need propulsion. You'd need communications. You'd need computers. All of those things. So, we have all of those disciplines and all those areas in the spacecraft represented here."

Building 9: What to do 'when you no longer have gravity assisting you'

The Space Vehicle Mockup Facility — known to JSC workers as Building 9 — is constantly in flux, because modules constantly shift in and out of the facility for different missions. The facility's goal these days is not only to support NASA missions, but also private industry, by providing the physical space and hardware to simulate problems in space if they arise.

When it comes to astronaut training, one example is learning how to do CPR: "CPR is hard enough when you have gravity. When you no longer have gravity assisting you, they [astronauts] have to learn to 'strap in'," said Mathieu Caron, the CSA's director of astronauts, life sciences and space medicine, who accompanied reporters on the tour of Building 9.

That's only one example of an emergency, of course. Another one is fire alarms—in which the astronauts learn how to quickly gather their team in a "safe haven" with communications and computers available to talk with Earth, then to make sure everyone is there before assessing the situation and figuring out how to deal with it (which could mean fighting the fire, or heading to an escape vehicle.)

When astronauts are training for fire alarms in Building 9, Caron said, there's an extra step involved: letting nearby personnel know that the simulated fire alarm in the ISS area is not the actual fire alarm for the building. "Like, if you hear this specific bell, it's because they're just practicing that training," he explained.

The emphasis of our visit was on ISS operations, given that we were visiting in association with Crew-13, but the facility's website also mentions "commercial space flight companies and exploration programs" among the customers.

While walking the perimeter of the building alongside NASA and CSA, we could see some distant glimpses of other companies' hardware — from SpaceX and Blue Origin, for example, as well as the Starlab Space consortium's multi-floor space station mockup. As NASA very much intends to be the customer on future CLD destinations, surely more of these companies will be occupying the floor of Building 9 after the ISS retires.

Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory: 'The better they get, the more we treat it like the real world'

Our last stop on the Gilligan-like three-hour tour was the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, which is part of JSC's Sonny Carter Training Facility and about a 15-minute drive from the heart of the NASA campus. Most space people would easily recognize this place as the spot where astronauts rehearse spacewalks, clad in adapted spacesuits simulating what they'll feel for real the moment they step out the hatch.

I spent much of my childhood in community center pools, learning how to swim, and when I walked beside the football-field-sized pool for the first time the humidity — and the echoes on the ceiling and walls from noises — felt somewhat like old times. The scale, however, was strange. The echoes were happening much further away from me, while the humidity was less intense given the expanse of the huge facility. It was hard for my mind to settle, as the setting felt both familiar and unfamiliar.

We only spent a few moments poolside, however, as getting up on the catwalks allowed a much better view of the scene. In one zone were the ISS module mockups inside the pool, through which a couple of astronauts were training while surrounded by divers. (You could track the team's progress by watching the bubbles and hoses on the surface.)

"When they [astronaut candidates] first start, we help them a lot," the NBL's Tim Hall told our media group. "The more mature they get in their training, and the better they get, the more we treat it like the real world — and let them execute on their own."

In another was an area where the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis 2 moon mission was put through its paces during training: Could the arriving divers handle waves? What if the spacecraft landed upside-down? All of these things were simulated repeatedly to ease recovery operations.

"Have you ever watched 'Apollo 13'?" Hall asked us. (It's the movie that sparked my interest in space when I saw it on VHS in 1996, so yes.) "If you're a fan, at the end of the movie, you'll see them at 'Stable 1'," he continued — that means the spacecraft is upright in the water.

"We have Stable 1, 2, 3, 4. Those are all the positions of the vehicle when it's laying in the water. So, this thing is actually training for the crew. … we can rotate [the spacecraft], so they train the crew how to get in and out of it in the different stable conditions."

The deep-ocean capabilities are not only useful for spacecraft, but for applications like the oil industry: the pool has been used in past years to simulate offshore work and fire training for the engineers on distant rigs, for example. Private space companies also have had their own time in the pool for spacesuit applications, such as what Axiom Space advertised in 2025 to test the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) spacesuit that NASA astronauts are expected to use on the lunar surface.

Could more companies come in as the ISS program winds down? Hall says right now a lot of the spare capacity is taken up by the U.S. Navy, but the NBL does expect to offer more of these commercial services in future — as it's already advertised on their website.

"We're open to that for sure," Hall said. "We haven't had anybody out here yet for, like, a recovery or anything on training like that from a private space [company], but that's definitely something we'll address."

Two astronauts — including the first French woman in history to perform a spacewalk — worked outside of the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday (Aug 18), becoming temporary TV repairpersons. Just like what frequently happens on Earth, the work required more time than the "appointment" allowed, requiring a second visit to be scheduled.

NASA astronaut Anil Menon and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Sophie Adenot were tasked with the removal and replacement of a Space-to-Ground antenna that since November had ceased being able to track NASA's data relay satellites, rendering it unusable. A second antenna has been in use since, continuing the transmission of critical data and enabling high-speed communications with Mission Control Houston.

Spacewalk planners had allocated about six and a half hours for the work to be completed. The two Expedition 75 crewmates were successful in removing the failed Space-to-Ground antenna from its mount on the station's truss but ran into delays disconnecting its electrical connections and and locking down gimbal bolts, or pins, to secure the large dish assembly during its transport to its temporary stowage location.

"We got into this with the mindset that we wanted everything to go perfectly," said Menon as the spacewalk came to an end. "Things were a lot different than expected, but what I would say that I am really impressed with is that all of those contingencies were well thought out."

As such, flight controllers had the astronauts tether the failed antenna to the truss and waived them off installing the replacement antenna, leaving it for a future extravehicular activity (EVA) still to be scheduled. Mission managers will decide whether to add that task to a spacewalk already planned for next Tuesday (Aug. 25) or to leave it for a later outing.

"We are looking at times," radioed Mission Control to the spacewalkers. "We are going to go directly to the long-duration tie-down of this SGANT on the Z-1 truss."

Menon and Adenot began the spacewalk at 8:29 a.m. EDT (1229 GMT) when they switched their spacesuits to battery power. Their EVA ended once they were back inside the U.S. Quest airlock and re-pressurization began at 2:52 p.m. EDT (1852 GMT).

Their total time logged on this spacewalk was 6 hours and 23 minutes.

Tuesday's spacewalk was the 282nd in support of ISS assembly, maintenance and upgrades. It was Menon's second EVA since making his first outing with fellow NASA astronaut Jessica Meir on Aug. 6, increasing his total spacewalking time to 12 hours and 50 minutes.

It was the first time that Sophie Adenot ventured into the vacuum of space, making her the first female and fifth citizen of France to perform a spacewalk after Jean-Loup Chrétien, Jean-Pierre Haigneré, Philippe Perrin, and Thomas Pesquet.

"What a day!" said Adenot. "My deepest gratitude to everyone who made this possible — the pioneers who came before us, but also the incredible teams working behind the scenes today."

This was the fifth spacewalk conducted out of the International Space Station this year, the second for Expedition 75 and the 97th using U.S. extravehicular mobility unit (EMU) spacesuits at the space station.

Sophie Adenot will make spaceflight history today (Aug. 18).

The European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut will become the first French woman ever to conduct a spacewalk, an activity she'll undertake with NASA astronaut Anil Menon.

The duo are scheduled to step outside the International Space Station (ISS) for a 6.5-hour excursion today at around 8:35 a.m. EDT (1235 GMT). You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA. Coverage starts at 7 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT).

Adenot and Menon will "replace a space-to-ground antenna on the orbital complex," NASA officials wrote in a spacewalk preview.

"The antenna is a critical communications link NASA uses to transmit data, enabling high-speed communications between the Mission Control Center in Houston and the space station," they added.

This will be the second spacewalk for Menon; his first one, conducted with fellow NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, occurred on Aug. 6. During that extravehicular activity (EVA), a carbon dioxide sensor on Menon's spacesuit gave "an unexpected data reading," NASA officials wrote in an Aug. 7 update.

The sensor returned to normal after Menon doffed the suit, but NASA took some extra time to make sure there was no serious issue. As a result, the agency pushed his second spacewalk back a few days — from the originally planned Aug. 13 to today.

Today's spacewalk will be the 282nd overall in the long history of the ISS. Menon, who reached orbit on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on July 14, will be "crewmember 1" on the EVA. Adenot — a member of SpaceX's Crew-12 mission, which reached the orbiting lab in February — will be "crewmember 2."

Adenot won't be the first French person overall to conduct an EVA. That distinction goes to Jean-Loup Chrétien, who performed a spacewalk outside the then-Soviet Union's Mir space station in 1988.

Other male French astronauts, including Philippe Perrin and Thomas Pesquet, later spacewalked outside the ISS. Pesquet also became the first French person to command an ISS mission, taking the reins in October 2021.

Two NASA astronauts installed the seventh and final set of mounting hardware for new sets of solar arrays during a successful 6.5-hour spacewalk outside of the International Space Station.

Jessica Meir and Anil Menon on Thursday (Aug. 6), assembled the modification kit for one of the space station's eight power channels, which will allow for the future addition of a new ISS Rolll-Out Solar Array (iROSA). Since 2021, astronauts on prior spacewalks have deployed six of the iROSA assemblies, leaving now just two awaiting delivery to the station later this year.

Like building a giant erector set, Meir and Menon worked to assemble and bolt together the triangular brackets on the 3B power channel, located on the far right, or starboard (S6) segment of the station's backbone truss. Menon was positioned on an articulating portable foot restraint (APFR) atop a worksite interface (WIFEX), providing a stable angle to work from the truss.

Once the modification kit structure was built and secured to the 3B mast canister, the two spacewalkers routed cabling that will carry the electricity from the future iROSA into the 3B power channel and then covered the struts with multi-layer insulation to protect them from micrometeoroid strikes.

The iROSA wings sit forward of the legacy solar arrays, augmenting their electricity generation rather than replacing it. The station's eight original arrays began showing degraded power output as they exceeded their 15-year design life. When used in tandem with the new iROSA wings, the upgraded system will increase the station's electricity supply by 20% to 30%.

The other power channel currently without an iROSA deployed is 2A on the left, or port side, of the station.

"Anil, you can see the moon to the — well, I am not sure what way you're facing, but…," said Meir, taking a short break during the spacewalk to notice NASA's next destination for astronauts under its Artemis program.

"To my right. Yeah, I see it — thanks for the heads-up," said Menon. "I can see a future moon base there."

"I can see it, too!" Meir said.

Meir later turned her attention to Mars with her closing words of the day.

"On this day in 2012, NASA's robotic rover Curiosity successfully landed on the surface of Mars with the goal of understanding if the planet could have fostered life. Curiosity achieved that goal within a year," she said. "One day, humans will visit Curiosity, propelled by the groundbreaking science, technology demonstrations and operations conducted here on the International Space Station for almost 26 years now."

"Today, we made one more step toward expanding the ISS power system, further sustaining our human presence in low Earth orbit, as we prepare to take those next steps," said Meir.

Thursday's spacewalk began at 8:33 a.m. EDT (1233 GMT) when Meir and Menon switched their spacesuits to internal battery power. After collecting their tools and reentering the Quest airlock, the spacewalk, or extravehicular activity (EVA), concluded at 3:00 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT), 6 hours and 27 minutes after it began.

This was the 96th U.S. EVA and 281st spacewalk overall in support of the International Space Station's assembly, maintenance and enhancement. It was the first career spacewalk for Menon and the sixth for Meir, bringing her total time on EVA to 42 hours and 33 minutes.

This was the first spacewalk for the space station's Expedition 75 crew. There are two more U.S. outings scheduled for this month: EVA 97 will work to replace a space-to-ground antenna on Aug. 13, and EVA 98 will connect power channel cables and data relay systems as part of ongoing maintenance, including preparations for the station's future deorbit, as well as replace a navigational aid used for spacecraft docking on Aug. 25.

The next crew, spacecraft and rocket to fly to the International Space Station are on schedule to meet their mid-September launch date, mission managers and the astronauts told reporters on Monday (Aug. 3).

SpaceX's Crew-13 astronauts — commander Jessica Watkins and pilot Luke Delaney of NASA, mission specialist Josh Kutryk with the Canadian Space Agency and mission specialist Sergey Teteryatnikov of Russia's federal space corporation Roscosmos — will become only the second crew to fly aboard the Dragon spacecraft "Grace" when they lift off no earlier than Sept. 12 from Space Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

They will then dock with the space station the following day to begin a seven-month stay on the orbiting outpost, as part of the Expedition 75/76 crew.

"We expect a very busy mission with lots of station maintenance, both internal and external, with a few EVAs [extravehicular activities, or spacewalks] on the docket," said Watkins, who is the only member of Crew-13 to have flown into space before and will become the first active NASA astronaut to fly on Dragon twice. "[We also expect] visiting vehicle capture and stowage operations, lots of science — very interesting science experiments that will be flying with us as well — and plenty of outreach."

Kutryk will be the fourth Canadian to serve on an ISS crew and the second from his country to fly this year, after Jeremy Hansen launched around the moon on the Artemis II crew in April.

"Personally, myself, I grew up on a cattle farm in Canada. It's a long way from being here with this mission in front of us, but the one thing that has resonated at every twist and turn in that journey has been the complexity of these missions and the enormity of the teams that go into pulling missions like this off," said Kutryk. "So, we need to say thank you to everyone."

Cybertrucks, spacesuits and mudflats

"Every time we do a human spaceflight mission, it gives us an opportunity to strengthen our understanding of low Earth orbit. It gives us an opportunity to broaden our international relationships and an opportunity to showcase to the world what we can do in low Earth orbit for human spaceflight," said Joel Montalbano, NASA's deputy associate administrator for human spaceflight.

During the mission, Watkins, Delaney, Kutryk and Teteryatnikov will take part in research to combat heart disease and Parkinson's disease by studying human stem cell-derived tissues. They will also explore crop production that's important for longer-duration spaceflight missions, and help improve scientists' understanding of blood flow abnormalities that are seen on long missions. The crew will also test new diagnostic medical equipment for keeping an eye on their overall health.

First, though, they must get to space.

"Final integration of the Dragon is complete. The capsule was stacked on the trunk just last week and mission preparations are proceeding well for a mid-September launch," said Dana Weigel, NASA's manager for its low Earth orbit program. "Falcon 9 booster maintenance will kick off this month. That same booster was flown on Crew-12. We are not tracking any major issues for this mission campaign."

This Friday (Aug. 7), the crew will don their SpaceX suits — the first "Rev. 3" models with improved donning and doffing capabilities, as well as adjustments to account for spinal growth on orbit — and get their first chance to board "Grace," their ride into orbit and back. This "test drive" will help them gain some muscle memory — some familiarity within the the vehicle mission — and provide them a very big psychological boost, managers said.

"Grace" will also sport new metal "mud flaps" for its Draco abort thrusters, replacing earlier carbon fiber models. In addition, should the crew encounter an emergency before launch, they will be evacuated from the launch pad area for the first time by Tesla Cybertrucks operated by SpaceX, reducing conflicts when SpaceX and NASA want to launch crewed flights at the near or same time.

"There was a lot of certification that had to go into making sure those Cybertrucks would start up with a gloved hand. There were a lot of tests in terms of making sure you could egress the vehicle with a bulky suit on," Richard Jones, deputy program manager of NASA's commercial crew program, said in a response to a question from collectSPACE and Space.com. "All of those things were proven to be already intact, and they're going to configure those Cybertrucks to be ready."

Departures and arrivals

The four members of Crew-13 will be sharing their time on the space station with outgoing and incoming Russian Soyuz crews, who will launch and land with members of Delaney's astronaut candidate class, "The Flies," selected in 2021.

"It's really exciting to see the class fly," said Delaney. "We're going to be meeting Anil [Menon] up there. He's part of our class. Deniz [Burnham] will come up right behind to replace him. Working closely with both of those two throughout astronaut training, it's really just satisfying."

"I'm slightly hoping we get delayed a little bit, so we have some overlaps, so that way we can have three Flies back to back, he said.

For Kutryk, some timing just cannot be controlled.

"It's about midway through — pretty much perfect timing. That's sarcasm," said Kutryk, referring to the upcoming birth of his third child, who is expected to come into the world while he is on the space station.

"It's been done a couple times before," he said, referring to NASA astronaut Mike Fincke and Randy Bresnik, who both had children born while on the ISS. "I think that my family is ready. I have a wonderful, huge support network, from my wife outwards, around us, and we're looking forward to that challenge and to the uniqueness of this experience."