After Emergency Medical Evacuation Aboard The ISS, NASA Urgently Advances A Manned Mission

On January 14, NASA was forced to urgently repatriate the Crew-11 crew, present on board the ISS, to the land. One of the members suffered from a health problem, which fortunately was taken care of before a disaster struck. But since January 14, the day of the evacuation, the ISS has looked like a ghost ship, since only three astronauts currently maintain the station.

For a complex the size of a football field, this is far too little; the ISS being designed to operate normally with seven people on board. An unprecedented situation which forced NASA to shake up your calendar a little to fill the void left by the departure of Crew-11.

ISS: the big rescue is advanced!

Initially scheduled for February 15, the Crew-12 mission was brought forward four days. NASA is now targeting a takeoff on February 11 at 12:00 p.m. (Paris time) from the Cape Canaveral launch pad, Florida. The three remaining astronauts (Chris Williams, Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev) will thus be able to be relieved and see their schedule become a little fuller.

Thus, it will be the Crew Dragon ship named Grace who will come to their aid; it will transport an exceptional quartet, including a very well-known figure in France : Frenchwoman Sophie Adenot, who will have her baptism of space here. She will be accompanied by more experienced captain Jessica Meir, pilot Jack Hathaway and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.

If this early takeoff is possible, it is above all because SpaceX and NASA managed to prepare the Crew Dragon spacecraft and the Falcon 9 rocket well before the set deadline, thus reducing the time the ISS remains vulnerable.

Although three days of delay between the launch of the Falcon 9 may not seem like much, it is actually enormous. Indeed, as the ISS operates with the minimum number of people on board, saving 72 hours on the schedule means offering three days of additional sleep and security to the trio who must be in overdrive, all the while by limiting the risks of incidents on the 450-ton behemoth.

Crew-11’s hasty departure left a gaping hole in NASA’s schedule. To avoid destabilizing the entire production line for future Crew Dragon ships (Crew-13 and following), the agency cannot simply bring forward all future missions by three months. With SpaceX factories running at just-in-time to assemble the launchers, it is impossible to increase the production rate without compromising the safety of the crews.

An extended stay

This is why she chose to send Crew-12 as a mission tampon. By staying nine months instead of sixSophie Adenot and her team will make up for the gap caused by the premature departure of their predecessors and ensure the continuity of expeditions 74 and 75. A necessary sacrifice: their stay has been extended so that the normal cycle of rotations resumes its cruising speed by the end of the year.

If the weather or technical conditions changed on February 11, NASA still planned fallback slots on February 12 and 13 (respectively at 11:38 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. French time). Fingers crossed that everything goes well; NASA really does not need to face further difficulties after the January 14 incident.

However, let’s not dramatize: the resilience of the ISS has been proven time and time again and the three planned firing windows mathematically guarantee a return to normal in the next three weeks. As soon as the capsule hatch Grace will be locked, the crew on board the ISS will finally be able to resume the normal course of its life in orbit.