SpaceX and NASA to send international astronauts to space

The first Native American woman ever to travel to Earth’s orbit will take flight this week on a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. The astronaut, NASA’s Nicole Aunapu Mann, will serve as mission commander — also becoming the first woman to command a SpaceX flight.

The former US Marine Corps pilot’s historic journey — and her first trip to space since joining NASA’s astronaut corps in 2013 — will officially launch on Wednesday.

Mann and her three crewmates will travel to the International Space Station for a five-month stay, joining a long list of astronauts to serve as full-time staff aboard the orbiting laboratory, which has hosted humans for nearly 22 years.

In her role as commander, Mann will be responsible for ensuring the spacecraft is on track from the time it launches until it docks with the ISS and again when it returns home with the four Crew-5 astronauts next year. Never before has a woman taken on the commander role on a SpaceX mission, though a couple women served in that position during the Space Shuttle Program, which NASA retired in 2011.

Mann grew up in Northern California and is a registered member of the Wailacki tribe of the Round Valley reservation, which encompasses several Indigenous tribes that were forced onto the same post-colonial reservation in the mid-1800s.

Her crewmates will also represent a broad swath of cultural backgrounds. She’ll fly alongside fellow NASA astronaut Josh Cassada, who is from Minnesota; Koichi Wakata of Japan’s space agency, called JAXA, or Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency; and Anna Kikina, a Roscomos cosmonaut who joined this mission as part of a US-Russian ride-sharing agreement.

American and Russian astronauts will once again share space aboard the same spacecraft after NASA and its Russian counterpart, Roscosmos, reached a ride-sharing agreement in July.

As part of the deal, Russian cosmonauts will join at least two SpaceX missions to the International Space Station, marking the first time a Russian has boarded one of SpaceX’s relatively new Crew Dragon spacecraft.

Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina will be on the SpaceX rocket that is launching on Wednesday, and Andrei Fedyaev will fly on another SpaceX mission in the spring of 2023, according to NASA. On the flip side, two seats on two separate launches of Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft have been reserved for NASA astronauts.

The seat-swap agreement, which does not involve any exchange of payment between the countries, has been looming over NASA and Roscosmos for months amid rising tensions between the United States and Russia over the war in Ukraine.

NASA has repeatedly said that tensions on the ground have had no affect on the countries’ ongoing cooperation in space, though the ISS — which is jointly operated by NASA, Roscosmos and several other space agencies — has become the subject of bellicose rhetoric levied by Russian politicians. Dmitry Rogozin, who was replaced as the head of Roscosmos over the summer, had threatened to pull Russian cooperation from the ISS entirely.

The history: Such ride sharing agreements have been common throughout the two-decade history of the ISS. After NASA retired the Space Shuttle program in 2011, for example, American astronauts had to rely entirely on seats aboard Soyuz spacecraft for access to the ISS. That reliance ended only after SpaceX’s Crew Dragon entered service in 2020.

SpaceX has used Teslas to transport astronauts to the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida since the very first Crew Dragon launch in 2020.

Earlier today, NASA showed footage of the astronauts exiting the facilities where they tucked into their spacesuits, waved goodbye to their families and headed for the launch pad. And the Teslas were outfitted with special vanity plates, reading "BLA5TOFF."

The "5", of course, pays homage to the name of this mission: Crew-5.

It's called Crew-5 because it's the fifth such fully operational mission to the ISS for SpaceX. "Fully operational" just means it's not a test flight and the crew on board is headed for a long-duration mission to the space station.

Note: It's the sixth overall joint, crewed mission for SpaceX and NASA. The first astronaut launch for SpaceX, in 2020, was the Demo-2 mission that carried astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the ISS. But that mission was still considered a test.

SpaceX and NASA are set to launch a crew of astronauts who hail from all over the world on a trip to the International Space Station. The mission, which will include some historic firsts, is moving forward even as rising geopolitical tensions brew on the ground.

The four crew members — astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada of NASA, astronaut Koichi Wakata of JAXA, or Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and cosmonaut Anna Kikina of Roscosmos — are on track to launch aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft at 12 p.m. ET Wednesday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Dubbed Crew-5, the mission is the sixth astronaut flight launched as a joint endeavor between NASA and SpaceX, a privately held aerospace company, to the space station. The collaboration is to transition the task of shuttling people to and from the ISS after NASA retired its Space Shuttle Program in 2011.

The upcoming spaceflight marks a historic moment, as Mann will not only become the first Native American woman ever to travel to space. She'll also serve as mission commander, making her the first woman ever to take on such a role for a SpaceX mission.

What's more, Kikina will be the first Russian to join a SpaceX mission as part of a ride-sharing deal NASA and Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, inked in July. Her participation in the flight is the latest clear signal that, despite mounting tensions over Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the decades-long US-Russia partnership in space will persist — at least for now.

What happens next: After the anticipated launch on Wednesday, the Crew Dragon spacecraft will separate from the SpaceX rocket that boosts it to orbit and begin a slow, precise trek to the ISS, which orbits about 200 miles (322 kilometers) above the Earth's surface.

The spacecraft is aiming to dock with the space station Thursday around 5 p.m. ET.

Get briefed on the mission