Crew-4 Launched to Space Station During ‘An Exciting Time for NASA’

By Bob Granath

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 3:52 a.m. EDT on the morning of April 27, 2022, boosting the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station. NASA’s Crew-4 astronauts plan to spend six months conducting research to improve life on Earth. Their work also will aid agency preparations for exploration beyond Earth.

During a Crew-4 pre-flight news conference on March 31, 2022, Kathy Lueders, NASA’s Associate Administrator of the Space Operations Mission Directorate, pointed to numerous key milestone on the near horizon.

“It’s an exciting time for us here at NASA,” she said. “We’re here getting ready for our Crew-4 rotation mission, once again launching to the International Space Station. Soon, we also will have our Boeing uncrewed demonstration (Orbital Flight Test-2, the second uncrewed flight test of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner commercial crew spacecraft) and leading up to the Artemis 1 uncrewed demonstration mission.”

In spite of the increased launch rate, Lueders stressed safety will remain a paramount concern.

“What is very clear,” she said, “all these missions require a vigilance of the team and constant careful preparations as we continue.”

NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines and Jessica Watkins, along with European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti of Italy lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center aboard a new Crew Dragon spacecraft. They named their spacecraft “Freedom.” Crew-4 commander Lindgren explained the reason for their choice.

It was to “celebrate a fundamental human right,” he said. “It is to honor industry and innovation that emanates from the unencumbered human spirit. It also recalls our first American (human) spaceflight by Alan Shepard aboard Freedom 7.”

The Crew

Lindgren was born in Taipei, Taiwan, where his father was stationed while serving in the U.S. Air Force. His family later moved to the Midwestern United States, but he grew up mostly in England. After graduating from high school in Fairfax, Virginia, Lindgren attended the U.S. Air Force Academy, graduating in 1996 with a bachelor’s degree in biology. He worked at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston as a flight surgeon before being selected as an astronaut in 2009. He launched to the International Space Station aboard the Soyuz TMA-17M spacecraft in 2015, spending 141 days as an Expedition 44/45 flight engineer.

“We will be excited to get to orbit and conduct this mission’s science and research,” Lindgren said. “The research also will help us succeed in our mission to return to the Moon and to go on to Mars, extending our presence in the solar system.”

Watkins, called “Wati” for short, is a mission specialist for Crew-4. Born in Gaithersburg, Maryland, she grew up in Lafayette, Colorado. She received a bachelor’s degree in geological and environmental sciences at Stanford University and went on to earn a doctorate in geology from the University of California at Los Angeles. As a geologist, she was a science team collaborator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, studying results from the Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity. She was selected as a NASA astronaut in 2017.

Watkins says she enjoys working together with her crewmates.

“As our training starts out, we train individually,” she said. “Later, we come together, we really get to know each other and we function well as a team.”

Hines, nicknamed “Farmer,” is the pilot of the Crew Dragon spacecraft. He was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, but considers Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to be his hometown. Hines was awarded a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from Boston University in 1997. He went on to earn a master’s in flight test engineering from the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School in 2008 and a master’s in aerospace engineering from the University of Alabama in 2010. He also will serve as an Expedition 67 flight engineer on this, his first spaceflight.

Before the mission, Hines said he was looking forward to spacewalks, known as extravehicular activities, or EVAs.

“Our EVA’s will focus on continuing the modernizing of the solar arrays, the power system for the space station,” he said. “We plan to install modernization kits (on the arrays).”

Born in Milan, Italy, Cristoforetti graduated from the Technical University of Munich with a degree in mechanical engineering. She was a fighter pilot in the Italian Air Force prior to being selected as an ESA astronaut in 2009. Crew-4 will be her second trip to space, having served aboard the space station as a flight engineer during Expedition 42/43 in 2015. She will serve in the same role for Expedition 67.

So far, she is the only woman in the ESA astronaut corps, but expects more European women to follow in the near future.

“We recently had more than 20,000 applications (for positions as an ESA astronaut),” she said. “I think we got a great response also from young female professionals across the continent compared to my selection back in 2009 where female applicants were only about 15 to 16 percent. We have about 25 percent (women applicants) now and we definitely expect to have some great female colleagues by the end of the year.”

ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher noted that Crew-4 is the third commercial crew mission to fly an astronaut from the European Space Agency.

“It gives me great pleasure to see the successful launch of Samantha Cristoforetti and her Crew-4 colleagues,” he said. “Samantha will take over from Matthias Maurer and continue to represent Europe and support European experiments aboard the space station throughout her mission.”

The Spacecraft

The SpaceX Crew Dragon is an autonomous spacecraft designed to deliver a mix of crew and cargo to low-Earth orbit. The capsule is 27 feet high and 13 feet in diameter. For NASA trips to the International Space Station, the Crew Dragon will carry from four to seven NASA-sponsored crewmembers and return astronauts with about 6,600 pounds of time-critical scientific research experiments and equipment.

The capsule’s trunk is an integral element of the spacecraft, containing solar panels, heat-removal radiators and fins to provide aerodynamic stability in the unlikely event of an emergency abort.

The Falcon 9 launch vehicle is 229 feet tall and is 12 feet in diameter. The first stage has nine engines generating 1,710,000 pounds of thrust. The second stage has one engine with 210,000 pounds of thrust. Propellant for both stages are RP-1, highly refined kerosene, and liquid oxygen. Like the Crew Dragon spacecraft, the first stage of the rocket is reusable. The Falcon 9 first stage returns to either a landing pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station or a SpaceX ship off shore named, Of Course I Still Love You.

The Falcon 9 first stage for Crew-4 flew previously on SpaceX’s 22nd commercial resupply mission to the space station in June 2021, NASA’s Crew-3 mission in November 2021 and SpaceX’s Turksat 5B launch in December 2021. This will be the first crew launch on a booster making its fourth flight.

The Mission

Lindgren says he is looking forward to seeing how his “rookie” crewmates react to their first spaceflight.

“Samantha and I are really excited to see Farmer and Wati launch for the first time,” he said, “and to see how they adapt to being in weightlessness, not to mention realizing their lifelong dream (of flying in space).”

After docking, the Crew-4 astronauts will be welcomed inside the space station by the Expedition 67 crew. NASA’s Crew-3 astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Mashburn, Kayla Barron and ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer of Germany arrived in October 2021. Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveyev and Sergei Korsakov were launched aboard Soyuz MS-21 in March 2022.

NASA’s Crew-3 astronauts will undock from the space station and return, landing off the coast of Florida, several days after Crew-4’s arrival. Their splashdown currently is planned for late April.

The Crew-4 astronauts will conduct new scientific research in areas such as materials science, health technologies and plant science to prepare for human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit. Experiments will include studies on the aging of immune systems, organic material concrete alternatives and cardiorespiratory effects during and after long-duration exposure to microgravity. These are just some of the more than 200 science experiments and technology demonstrations that will take place during their mission.

Mission teams also are targeting August 2022, for the launch of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission to the space station for a six-month mission aboard the microgravity laboratory.

Crew-4 astronauts plan to return to Earth in September 2022, following a similar handover with Crew-5 of NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, along with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina.

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Crew-4 Liftoff!

Check out this short video of the liftoff of astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Jessica Watkins, Bob Hines and Samantha Cristoforetti aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon launched by the company’s Falcon 9 rocket on April 27, 2022. Video courtesy of NASA