NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
NASA was established in 1958, succeedin ...
Commercial Crew operational flight, and its seventh overall crewed orbital flight. The mission launched on 27 April 2022 at 07:52 UTC before docking with the
International Space Station
The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest Modular design, modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos ( ...
(ISS) at 23:37 UTC. It followed shortly after the private Axiom 1 mission to the ISS earlier in the month utilizing SpaceX hardware. Three American (NASA)
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 ...
and one European (ESA) astronaut were onboard the mission.
Crew-4 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 ...
of the
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 named ''Freedom'', named such by the crew because it "celebrates a fundamental
human right
Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hum ...
, and the industry and innovation that emanate from the unencumbered human spirit". The booster used on this mission was the B1067, which makes it the first Commercial Crew mission to use a booster on its fourth flight (it previously was used to launch SpaceX Crew-3 in 2021).
Samantha Cristoforetti
Samantha Cristoforetti, OMRI (; born in Milan on 26 April 1977) is an Italian European Space Agency astronaut, former Italian Air Force pilot and engineer. She holds the record for the longest uninterrupted spaceflight by a European astronaut ( ...
was named the commander of Expedition 68 on 28 May 2021.
Jessica Watkins
Jessica Andrea Watkins (born May 14, 1988) is an American NASA astronaut, geologist, aquanaut and former international rugby player. Watkins was announced as the first Black woman who will complete an International Space Station long-term miss ...
was named mission specialist on 16 November 2021. Cristoforetti was later removed as commander of Expedition 68 due to the shortening of the Crew-4 mission.
Mission
The mission duration was 170 days. The European part of the mission is called ''Minerva'', named after the Roman goddess of wisdom, and it is European astronaut Cristoforetti's second mission to the ISS.