BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. — Days ahead of their scheduled launch to the International Space Station, the astronauts who will make up the NASA and SpaceX Crew-4 mission arrived at Kennedy Space Center Monday morning.

This will be the fourth full crew rotation mission under the Commercial Crew Program, excluding the launch of the Demo-2 mission in May 2020.  

“What an amazing time to be a part of human spaceflight. As we were coming in for the landing, we had the opportunity to fly and take a look at the pad and right next to our pad, the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket is sitting right there,” said Kjell Lindgren, the commander of the Crew-4 mission. 

The Crew-4 mission consists of:

• Kjell Lindgren — Commander
• Bob Hines — Pilot
• Samantha Cristoforetti — Mission Specialist 1
• Jessica Watkins — Mission Specialist 2

Lindgren and the other three members of the crew landed in a NASA jet that brought them from Johnson Space Center in Houston to the Launch and Landing Facility at KSC. It’s the site where the Space Shuttles used to land when it returned from its missions.

This mission will be the second for Lindgren, who previously few to the ISS on the Soyuz TMA-17M and was a member of Expedition 44/45 from July 2015 to December 2015. He says getting to launch from KSC will be a treat for them since they will be able to have family come watch them take off.

“Getting to launch from here, from Kennedy Space Center, from a historic launch pad with an incredible legacy of exploration is very, very meaningful for me,” Lindgren said.

Making history

The mission sending four astronauts to the ISS is not only further proving out the capabilities of the Commercial Crew Program (CCP), but also breaking a lot of new ground for NASA. 

Among the crew is first-time flier Dr. Jessica Watkins, known to her crew mates by the nickname “Watty.” When she arrives at the Space Station, she will become the first Black woman to conduct a long-duration flight aboard the station. 

“I am just really honored to be a part of the long legacy of Black astronauts and Black women astronauts who came before me,” Watkins said. “And I am grateful for the opportunity to be a small part of that towards an exciting future as well.”

Watkins, like fellow Crew-4 astronaut Bob Hanes, is a member of the 2017 Astronaut Candidate Class. A trained geologist, she was a NASA intern at NASA’s Ames Research Center and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where she helped work on the Mars rover: Curiosity. 

“I’m super excited to be able to just observe the Earth and use the unique vantage point, the unique perspective that we can get from the ISS to be able to observe geologic features and processes from a different vantage point than we’re able to using our other assets,” Watkins said.

The Crew-4 mission also include the first time NASA and SpaceX are using a booster that has flown three previous times. B1067-4 has previously supported the Cargo Resupply Services-22 (CRS-22), Crew-3 and Turksat 5B missions, the last one launching from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on December 18.

Following the Flight Readiness Review held on Friday, April 15, Steve Stich, the program manager for CCP, said they are continuing to push the bounds of reusability for SpaceX flight hardware.

“Our team did a lot of work to look at all the various components and make sure those were all ready to go,” Stich said. “We will have a first-time reuse of the composite heat shield structure on the Dragon vehicle for this flight. And then in particular, we’re reusing four Draco thrusters on this flight.”

‘Turtle Takeover’ continues

One of the highlights for this crew is that two out of the four members will be flying for the first time. Watkins and Hanes are members of the 2017 Astronaut Candidate Class, which was nicknamed “The Turtles.”

The group of 13 astronauts (seven men and six women) are made up of 11 NASA astronauts and two astronauts from the Canadian Space Agency. 

NASA astronauts Raja Chari and Kayla Barron were the first two members of the Turtle class to fly to the ISS. They launched in November and are preparing to wrap up their time aboard the orbiting outpost. 

Before their mission began, Barron said in a pre-launch press conference that their classmates were just as excited to see them fly as they were to launch.

“We definitely feel the Turtle love and support and we’re really excited for the chance to potentially welcome some of our classmates during our mission for the Turtle Takeover of the Space Station,” Barron said. “So, we couldn’t be more excited.” 

Now that the possibility is going to become a reality in a matter of days, the currently Earth-bound Turtles said they can’t wait to join their classmates.

“Our class is really tight and so the chance for us to go up there and give those guys a big hug and learn from them for a few days before they come home is pretty awesome,” Hines said. 

“It’s also a little bit daunting because they have some time to prepare for us to come up there and I’m not really sure what kind of Easter eggs we’ll be finding in our crew quarters once we get there,” he joked.

The next crew coming behind them will led by commander Nicole Mann and pilot Josh Cassada. They will be joined by Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Koichi Wakata. 

The fourth member is still somewhat up in the air. Back in December, Russian space agency, Roscosmos, announced that cosmonaut Anna Kikina would be the final member of the Crew-5 mission after officials there said they were confident in the qualifications of the SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle. 

However, an official agreement for a crew swap between the U.S. and Russia has not been finalized and it remains unclear if Kikina will join this crew. During a March 31 news conference discussing the Crew-4 mission, Kathy Lueders, the associate administrator for space operations, said the clock is ticking to get the deal done.

“If we don’t get the paperwork out of the Russian government and over to our side of the government, you know, we won’t have enough time to be able to support crew training and operations for a Crew-5,” Lueders said. “But I’ll tell you, we still feel like that’s our long-term logistics strategy. And so, we’ll continue to look at having it in place for the next crewed mission.”

If it doesn’t pan out for Crew-5, perhaps another Turtle can take the final spot.