SpaceX Crew-3 was the Crew Dragon's third

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

Commercial Crew operational flight, and its fifth overall crewed orbital flight. The mission successfully launched on 11 November 2021 at 02:03:31

UTC Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is the primary time standard globally used to regulate clocks and time. It establishes a reference for the current time, forming the basis for civil time and time zones. UTC facilitates international communica ...

to the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is a large space station that was Assembly of the International Space Station, assembled and is maintained in low Earth orbit by a collaboration of five space agencies and their contractors: NASA (United ...

. 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. In the early days of aviation it could be dange ...

of Crew Dragon ''Endurance''. 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, forbearance, resilience, constitution, fortitude, persistence, tenacity, steadfastness, perseverance, stamina, and hardiness) is the ability of an organism to exert itself and remain active for a ...

''. The name honors the SpaceX and NASA teams that endured through a

pandemic A pandemic ( ) is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has a sudden increase in cases and spreads across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals. Widespread endemic (epi ...

, 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 List of human spaceflight programs, human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member of a spa ...

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 Ernest Shackleton, Sir Ernest Shackleton, the expedition was an attempt to make the ...

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

Crew

German ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer 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 "Tom" Marshburn (born August 29, 1960) is an American physician and a former 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 a ...

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 Corporation for Space Activities "Roscosmos", commonly known simply as Roscosmos (), is a State corporation (Russia), state corporation of the Russian Federation responsible for space science, space flights, List of space agencies, c ...

trade seats on the

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

and Commercial Crew Vehicles, although in April 2021 then-acting NASA administration

Steve Jurczyk Stephen G. Jurczyk (February 20, 1962 – November 23, 2023) was an American engineer who served as the Acting Administrator of NASA. He previously worked at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Education and career Jurczyk was a ...

said that this agreement would be unlikely to start until after Crew-3 had launched.. The fourth seat was assigned to Kayla 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, a rookie is typically considered needing more tra ...

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 human spaceflight, crew aboard the first American space station. The mission began on November 16, 1973, with the launch of Gerald P. Carr, Edwar ...

crew blasted off to the

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

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

Commercial Crew Program The Commercial Crew Program (CCP) provides Private spaceflight, commercially operated human spaceflight, crew transportation service to and from the International Space Station (ISS) under contract to NASA, conducting crew rotations between t ...

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 02:03:31UTC. The return of Crew-3 was delayed multiple times, from April 2022 to early May. Undocking happened on 5 May (05:20UTC), with

splashdown Splashdown is the method of landing a spacecraft or launch vehicle in a body of water, usually by parachute. This has been the primary recovery method of American capsules including NASA’s Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Orion along with th ...

occurring the following day after spending 176 days in

space Space is a three-dimensional continuum containing positions and directions. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions. Modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless ...

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

Gallery

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 Successful space missions

Name

Crew

Mission

Gallery

See also

References