#commercial crew program

At this point, might as well.

(in all seriousness, I wish Boeing would get their shit together.)

Got to spend some unique moments today as part of the @nasa social event with the Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon Endurance that will be ferrying Crew 10 to the International Space Station. Named for the resilience of the NASA team and in honor of the ship at the heart of Shackleton's Antarctic expedition, Endurance will carry US astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Russian Cosmonaut Kirill Peskov.

On May 19, 2022, our partners at Boeing launched their Starliner CST-100 spacecraft to the International Space Station as a part of our Commercial Crew Program. This latest test puts the company one step closer to joining the SpaceX Crew Dragon in ferrying astronauts to and from the orbiting laboratory. We livestreamed the launch and docking at the International Space Station, but how? Let’s look at the communications and navigation infrastructure that makes these missions possible.

Primary voice and data communications are handled by our constellation of Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS), part of our Near Space Network. These spacecraft relay communications between the crewed vehicles and mission controllers across the country via terrestrial connections with TDRS ground stations in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and Guam, a U.S. territory in the Pacific Ocean.

TDRS, as the primary communications provider for the space station, is central to the services provided to Commercial Crew vehicles. All spacecraft visiting the orbiting laboratory need TDRS services to successfully complete their missions.

During launches, human spaceflight mission managers ensure that Commercial Crew missions receive all the TDRS services they need from the Near Space Operations Control Center at our Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. There, communications engineers synthesize network components into comprehensive and seamless services for spacecraft as they launch, dock, undock, and deorbit from the space station.

Nearby, at our Flight Dynamics Facility, navigation engineers track the spacecraft on their ascent, leveraging years of experience supporting the navigation needs of crewed missions. Using tracking data sent to our Johnson Space Center in Houston and relayed to Goddard, these engineers ensure astronaut safety throughout the vehicles’ journey to the space station.

Additionally, our Search and Rescue office monitors emergency beacons on Commercial Crew vehicles from their lab at Goddard. In the unlikely event of a launch abort, the international satellite-aided search and rescue network will be able to track and locate these beacons, helping rescue professionals to return the astronauts safely. For this specific uncrewed mission, the search and rescue system onboard the Boeing Starliner will not be activated until after landing for ground testing.

To learn more about NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) services and technologies, visit  https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/scan/index.html. To learn more about NASA’s Near Space Network, visit https://esc.gsfc.nasa.gov/projects/NSN.

Godspeed Shane, Megan, Tomas, and Akihiko; and congrats to NASA, SpaceX, and the 45th Space Wing for another beautiful and successful launch!!

US Crew Vehicle-2 launched at 0549 on April 23, 2021 from LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center. It is the third crewed flight of the Commercial Crew Program and first crewed US flight of 2021. The mission is also the first time a manned capsule has flown crew twice (Endeavour was used for DM-2) as well as the first to launch crew on an previously-flown booster (used for Crew-1). Both Shane Kimbrough and Akihiko Hoshide join the elite group of astronauts who have flown on three different spacecraft (Shuttle, Soyuz, and Dragon in their case) while Megan McArthur sits in the same seat her husband Bob Behnken occupied during Demonstration Mission 2. During their 6 month stay aboard the ISS, Hoside will become the second Japanese station commander.

Demonstration Mission 2: 05/30/2020 ✓

US Crew Vehicle 1: 11/15/2020 ✓

US Crew Vehicle 2: 04/23/2021 ✓

Inspiration 4: NET 09/15/2021

US Crew Vehicle 3: NET 10/23/2021