Crew-6 to lift off with three first time space travellers

Lift off targeted for 21:34 am E.T. March 2 – from LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center

Tomorrow, SpaceX Dragon capsule Endeavour will carry four astronauts to the International Space Station. Powered by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket the astronauts will reach the space station about twenty-five hours after liftoff. NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen, and Warren “Woody” Hoburg, along with UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alyneyadi, and Roscosmos astronaut Andrey Fedyaev will spend the next six months orbiting Earth in the microgravity laboratory conducting science experiments and routine maintenance to the station.

Commanding the mission is Stephen Bowen on his fourth trip to space. He is the only member of Crew-6 with actual space flight experience, and his three previous missions were all on a Space Shuttle, with the first in 2008, and last in 2011. He currently holds the title for the only astronaut to fly on consecutive shuttle missions, that of STS-132, and STS-133. Staying in the Astronaut Corps Bowen was assigned commander for the Crew-6 mission back in December of 2021.

First on the list of space rookies, Warren Hoburg designated the pilot for this mission. He received a Bachelor of Science degree from MIT in 2008. He followed that with a Master of Science degree in 2011, and a Ph.D. in 2013. In 2017 Hoburg was selected as an astronaut candidate in the twenty-second NASA Astronaut group. In December of 2020 he was announced as one of the eighteen selected to be a part of the Artemis Program for a lunar mission in 2024.

Mission Specialist 1 is Sultan Alyneyadi, who holds the honor of being one of the first two astronauts from the United Arab Emirates. After high school he joined the armed forces, then studied in at the University of Brighton in England where he received his BSc in Electronics and Communications Engineering in 2004. In 2008 Sultan went to Australia to receive his master’s degree in information and networks Security from Griffith University. Returning home in 2011 he completed his Ph.D. in Data Leakage Prevention Technology. From 4,022 people he was one of two selected to become the first Emirati astronauts. Following a series of mental and physical tests in the UAE and Russia he went through the UAE’s astronaut program at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre. In April of 2022 MBRSC acquired a seat from Axiom Space for a UAE astronaut for the next crew rotation. Which brings us to how he got here today, becoming the first Arab to fly a long duration space mission.

Our fourth and final member of Crew-6 is Mission Specialist 2, Andrey Fedyaev. After earning his degree in air transport and Air Traffic Control from the Balashov Military Aviation School in 2004 he joined the Russian Air Force. In 2013 he retired at the rank of Major with over 500 hours in Russian aircraft. In 2012 he was selected as a cosmonaut and reported to the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in 2012. Named a test cosmonaut on June 16, 2014. After serving eight years in that capacity, he is finally getting the chance to go to space.

Marking the fourth flight for Endeavour, the Crew Dragon capsule, it previously supported the DM-2, Crew-2, and Axiom-1 missions. It’s last mission, Ax-1 the capsule spent a whopping 280 days in space! Launching Endeavour of the pad will be SpaceX Falcon 9 B1078 on its first flight for the company. After launch B1078 will land back on Earth using the drone ship Just Read the Instructions as it’s LZ about 550 km Northeast of Cape Canaveral in the Atlantic Ocean.

Once the capsule docks to the zenith docking port on the ISS’s Harmony module it will remain docked for the duration of the Crew-6 mission. The first crewed space flight of the year will bring the total number of people who’ve flown to space up to 657, and also marks SpaceX’s thirteenth launch this year.

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