SpaceX Crew-3 was the fourth operational flight of a

Crew Dragon Dragon 2 is a class of partially reusable spacecraft developed and manufactured by American aerospace manufacturer SpaceX, primarily for flights to the International Space Station (ISS). SpaceX has also launched private missions such as Ins ...

spacecraft, and the third overall crewed orbital flight of the

Commercial Crew Program The Commercial Crew Program (CCP) provides commercially-operated crew transportation service to and from the International Space Station (ISS) under contract to NASA, conducting crew rotations between the expeditions of the International S ...

. The mission successfully launched on 11 November 2021 at 02:03:31 UTC 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 ...

. It was the

maiden flight The maiden flight, also known as first flight, of an aircraft is the first occasion on which it leaves the ground under its own power. The same term is also used for the first launch of rockets. The maiden flight of a new aircraft type is alw ...

Crew Dragon Endurance Crew Dragon ''Endurance'' (Dragon C210) is a Crew Dragon spacecraft manufactured by SpaceX, built and operated under NASA's Commercial Crew Program. On 11 November 2021, it was launched to transport personnel to the International Space Station ...

. This launch brought the total number of humans who have been to space to more than 600 with Maurer (600) and Barron (601).

Name

Crew Dragon capsules have been given names by their initial crews — '' Endeavour'' for the first, and '' Resilience'' for the second. On 7 October 2021, it was announced that the third capsule will be called ''

Endurance Endurance (also related to sufferance, resilience, constitution, fortitude, and hardiness) is the ability of an organism to exert itself and remain active for a long period of time, as well as its ability to resist, withstand, recover from an ...

''. The name honors the SpaceX and NASA teams that endured through a pandemic, building the spacecraft and training the

astronauts An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a spacecraft. Although generally r ...

who flew it. The name also honors ''

'', the ship used by Shackleton's

Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–1917 is considered to be the last major expedition of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. Conceived by Sir Ernest Shackleton, the expedition was an attempt to make the first land crossing ...

. The three-masted vessel sank in 1915 after being bound in ice before reaching Antarctica.

Crew

German ESA astronaut

Matthias Maurer Matthias Josef Maurer (born 18 March 1970) is a German European Space Agency astronaut and Materials scientist, who was selected in 2015 to take part in space training. Biography Maurer graduated from in Sankt Wendel, Saarland, in 1989.) He ...

was selected first for the mission in September 2020. NASA astronauts

Raja Chari Raja Jon Vurputoor Chari (born June 24, 1977) is an American test pilot and NASA astronaut. He is a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and U.S. Naval Test Pilot School, and has over 2,000 flyi ...

and

Thomas Marshburn Thomas Henry Marshburn (born August 29, 1960) is an American physician and a NASA astronaut. He is a veteran of three spaceflights to the International Space Station and holds the record for the oldest person to perform a spacewalk at 61 years o ...

were added on 14 December 2020 to the crew. The fourth seat was left open in anticipation that a Russian cosmonaut would take the seat, marking the beginning of a barter agreement that would see NASA and

Roscosmos The State Space Corporation "Roscosmos" (russian: Государственная корпорация по космической деятельности «Роскосмос»), commonly known simply as Roscosmos (russian: Роскосмос) ...

trade seats on the

Soyuz Soyuz is a transliteration of the Cyrillic text Союз ( Russian and Ukrainian, 'Union'). It can refer to any union, such as a trade union (''profsoyuz'') or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Сою́з Сове́тских Социалис ...

and Commercial Crew Vehicles, although in April 2021 then-acting NASA administration Steve Jurczyk said that this agreement would be unlikely to start until after Crew-3 had launched.. The fourth seat was assigned to

Kayla Barron Kayla Jane Barron (born September 19, 1987) is an American submarine warfare officer, engineer and NASA astronaut. Barron was selected in June 2017 as a member of the NASA Astronaut Group 22, and later qualified as an astronaut in 2020. Barron ...

in May 2021. Chari is the first

rookie A rookie is a person new to an occupation, profession, or hobby. In sports, a ''rookie'' is a professional athlete in their first season (or year). In contrast with a veteran who has experience and expertise, a rookie is usually inexperienced ...

astronaut to command a NASA space mission since the

Skylab 4 Skylab 4 (also SL-4 and SLM-3) was the third crewed Skylab mission and placed the third and final crew aboard the first American space station. The mission began on November 16, 1973, with the launch of Gerald P. Carr, Edward Gibson, and Wil ...

crew blasted off to the

Skylab Skylab was the first United States space station, launched by NASA, occupied for about 24 weeks between May 1973 and February 1974. It was operated by three separate three-astronaut crews: Skylab 2, Skylab 3, and Skylab 4. Major operations ...

space station in 1973. Gerald Carr, who had not flown in space before, led a three-man crew on an 84-day flight on the Skylab. This was also the first spaceflight for Maurer and Barron. The first astronauts of this

NASA Astronaut Group 22 NASA Astronaut Group 22 (nicknamed "The Turtles") is a group of twelve NASA astronauts selected in June 2017. They were joined by two Canadian Space Agency astronauts for training. History NASA announced the creation of this astronaut group in ...

(nicknamed ''The Turtles'') to fly to space, Raja Chari and Kayla Barron on SpaceX Crew-3 took a stuffed turtle as zero-g indicator, to pay a tribute to their astronaut group. Additionally, to include the other crew members on board, Matthias Maurer and Tom Marshburn, the turtle was named "Pfau", a German word meaning "Peacock" for Matthias Maurer who is German, and for Tom Marshburn who was part of

NASA Astronaut Group 19 NASA Astronaut Group 19 was a NASA spaceflight team that saw the training of two pilots, six mission specialists, three educator mission specialists to become NASA astronauts. These 11 astronauts began training in 2004. This was the last group ...

(nicknamed ''The Peacocks'').

Mission

The third SpaceX operational mission in the

was originally scheduled to launch on 31 October 2021. However, it was delayed to 3 November 2021 due to unfavorable weather in the Atlantic Ocean, and then further delayed to 7 November 2021 due to a minor medical issue with one of the astronauts. Due to expected bad weather, it was again delayed to 9 November 2021. Due to the launch delays, NASA decided to return the astronauts from Crew-2 before Crew-3 launched, thus being the first Crew Dragon indirect handover of space station crews. SpaceX Crew-2 departed the station on 8 November 2021 and splashed down on 9 November 2021. SpaceX Crew-3 mission launched from Cape Canaveral on 11 November 2021 at 02:03:31 UTC. The return of Crew-3 was delayed multiple times, from April 2022 to early May. Undocking happened on 5 May (05:20 UTC), with

splashdown Splashdown is the method of landing a spacecraft by parachute in a body of water. It was used by crewed American space capsules prior to the Space Shuttle program, by SpaceX Dragon and Dragon 2 capsules and by NASA's Orion Multipurpose Crew ...

occurring the following day after spending 176 days in

space Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually cons ...

. The European segment of the mission is called "Cosmic Kiss".

References

{{Portal bar, Spaceflight SpaceX Dragon 2 Spacecraft launched in 2021 SpaceX payloads contracted by NASA SpaceX human spaceflights 2021 in the United States Fully civilian crewed orbital spaceflights Spacecraft which reentered in 2022

Name

Crew

Mission

See also

References