Expedition 56 was the 56th expedition to the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA ( ...

, which began on June 3, 2018, upon the departure of

Soyuz MS-07 Soyuz MS-07 was a Soyuz spaceflight launched on 17 December 2017 at 07:21 UTC. It transported three members of the Expedition 54 crew to the International Space Station. Soyuz MS-07 was the 136th flight of a Soyuz spacecraft. The crew consiste ...

. Andrew Feustel,

Oleg Artemyev Oleg Germanovich Artemyev (russian: Олег Германович Артемьев; born December 28, 1970) is a Russian Cosmonaut for the Russian Federal Space Agency. He was selected as part of the RKKE-15 Cosmonaut group in 2003. He was a fli ...

, and

Richard R. Arnold Richard Robert "Ricky" Arnold II (born November 26, 1963, in Cheverly, Maryland) is an American educator and a NASA astronaut. He flew on Space Shuttle mission STS-119, which launched March 15, 2009, and delivered the final set of solar arra ...

were transferred from Expedition 55, with Andrew Feustel taking the commander role. Alexander Gerst,

Serena M. Auñón-Chancellor Serena most commonly refers to: * Serena Williams (born 1981), professional tennis player Serena may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * Serena (genre), 13th-century Occitan poetic genre * ''Serena'' (1962 film), a British crime th ...

, and Sergey Prokopyev launched aboard

Soyuz MS-09 Soyuz MS-09 was a Soyuz spaceflight which launched on 6 June 2018. It transported three members of the Expedition 56/ 57 crew to the International Space Station (ISS). is the 138th flight of a Soyuz spacecraft. The crew consisted of a Russian c ...

, on June 6, 2018. Expedition 56 ended with the departure of

Soyuz MS-08 Soyuz MS-08 was a Soyuz spaceflight that launched on 21 March 2018. It transported three members of the Expedition 55 crew to the International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest Modular design, modular spac ...

on October 4, 2018.

Crew

Originally NASA Astronaut

Jeanette Epps Jeanette Jo Epps (born November 3, 1970) is an American aerospace engineer and NASA astronaut. Epps received both her M. S. and Ph.D degrees in aerospace engineering from the University of Maryland, where she was part of the rotor-craft resear ...

was assigned as flight engineer for Expeditions 56 and 57, becoming the first African American space station crew member and the 15th African American to fly in space, but on January 16, 2018, NASA announced that Epps had been replaced by her backup

with no announced explanation as to why.

Spacewalks

*denotes spacewalks performed from the ''Pirs'' docking compartment in Russian

Orlan orlan is an internationally recognized French artist. She is not tied to any one material, technology, or artistic practice. She uses sculpture, photography, performance, video, 3D, video games, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and ro ...

suits.
All other spacewalks were performed from the ''Quest'' airlock.

Uncrewed spaceflights to the ISS

Resupply missions that visited the International Space Station during Expedition 56:

Leak

On August 29, 2018, a small leak was detected through a drop in air pressure by the flight controllers. After learning about the leak upon waking up, the astronauts discovered a 2 mm hole in the

orbital module The orbital module is a compartment of some space capsules used only in orbit. It is separated from the crewed reentry capsule before reentry. The orbital module provides 'habitat' space to use in orbit, while the reentry capsule tends to be focu ...

of the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft. The hole was initially repaired with tape, followed by a permanent repair with gauze and epoxy.

References

{{ISS expeditions Expeditions to the International Space Station 2018 in spaceflight