Russian and US spacecraft prepare for Spacewalk launch

In a similar rehearsal for the weekend before Thanksgiving, two rockets on both sides of the world are about to launch, one day after the other, to refuel the International Space Station with a new crew and a new cargo.

Three new Expedition 58 crew members are preparing to take off from the space station aboard a Russian Soyuz crew early next week. The next day, SpaceX will launch its Dragon cargo ship at the orbital laboratory located at the top of a Falcon 9 rocket.

Astronauts Anne McClain and David Saint-Jacques, accompanied by veteran cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, will travel to the station for six hours on Monday, December 3rd. The trio will take off inside its Soyuz MS-11 spacecraft at 6:31 am EST. The Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. About six hours later, they will reach their new home in space and will dock at the Poisk module for a six-and-a-half-month mission.

The SpaceX Dragon is expected to begin its ascent to space from the Kennedy Space Center launch pad on December 4th. Dragon will orbit the Earth for two days, loaded with new scientific data before being captured with the Canadarm2 station and installed in the Harmony module. .

Back in space, three Expedition 57 crew members are preparing for the arrival of the two spacecraft while remaining focused on the science of microgravity and preparing for the release in the near future. space.

Commander Alexander Gerst and flight mechanic Serena Auñón-Chancellor have been training for the appointment with the Dragon next week and will be captured today on a computer. The duo also continued their work on more research in life sciences and physics. Gerst has again studied the impact of protein crystals on Parkinson's disease to eventually improve treatments on Earth. Serena investigated how the cement hardens in space and continued configuring the material needed for an experiment on semiconductor crystals.

Cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev configures the Russian segment of the station for an exit in the space planned for December 11th. He and Kononenko will inspect the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft moored to the Rassvet module before the Expedition 57 trio returns to Earth on December 20th.