With the arrival of the Soyuz MS-15 rocket for the Expedition 61, the International Space Station has exceeded its usual three to six crew, with nine crew members now on the rather small station.
As of Wednesday September 25, nine crewmembers have found themselves floating aboard the ISS, triple the amount that is needed to staff the station. This friendlier living situation is thanks to the arrival of the Soyuz MS-15, which brought cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka and astronauts Jessica Meir and Hazza Al Mansouri to the station.
Lasting for eight days, the station is the second busiest it has ever been, back in 2009 there were 13 people on board, there was also nine people on board back in 2015.
The station will get a bit more spacious when Hazza Al Mansouri, the UAE’s first astronaut and the first Arab on the ISS, leaves to go back home, along with NASA’s Nick Hague and ISS commander Alexey Ovchinin.
The entire crew right now is as follows:
NASA astronaut Christina Koch, Luca Parmitano, NASA astronaut Drew Morgan, Russian cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Skripochka, NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Nick Hague, cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin, and of course, Al Mansouri.
Celebrando 3 compleanni in una settimana, con le maglie della nostra 'space band': 'Kryk Chayky' – 'Lo strillo del gabbiano'.
Celebrating 3 birthdays in one week (Me + @AstroHague & Alexey), wearing the t-shirts of our 'space band': 'Kryk Chayky' – 'The cry of the seagull'. pic.twitter.com/HtcS9jdlcZ
— Luca Parmitano (@astro_luca) September 30, 2019
Al Mansouri is on the ISS as part of the UAE’s landmark leap into space travel. Staying aboard for eight days, he has held Q&As, livestreams, and performed a variety of experiments ranging from studying the growth of seeds in microgravity, to the perception of time in space.
