3...2...1...(cheers)
Space-X Crew 5 launched this morning from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This space flight marks the first time a Native American woman will be in orbit. Nicole Mann will serve as this missions commander.
Kelly Humphries: “And among the many interesting parts of this mission is that it was the launch, the first launch for a Native American woman into space. Nicole Mann, she’s the commander of the spacecraft. She’s joined by Josh Cassada, the pilot, a Japanese astronaut, Koichi Wakata, who is making his fifth space-flight. And Anaka Nina, who I’m sorry, Annika Kina who is the first Russian to fly aboard a Space X Nassau Partnership mission.”
That was Kelly Humphries, News Chief at the Johnson Space Center in Houston Texas. Kelly also mentioned the Russian cosmonaut, Anna Kikina, joining this flight. This launch is a tremendous show of collaboration between the US and Russia, given recent tension between the two countries. Kelly cited the longstanding tradition of international partnerships at the ISS as cause for this monumental collaboration.
Kelly Humphries: “NASA and Russia have been partners for more than 20 years building this space station. And we’ve had both Americans and Russians and our other partner, astronauts from Europe and Japan and Canada on board continuously for 24 years now. And without the strength of the international partnerships that we’ve built from the space station, we would not be able to do that.”
There are a lot of benefits to doing zero-gravity research that can benefit those of us down here on Earth. Kelly spoke more about this with us.
Kelly Humphries: “Well, they’re going to be doing a lot of microgravity research. You know, among the different things are going to be working with our plant growth in space, making sure that we can begin to plow the field of growing our own sustenance on long duration missions. They’re going to be working on some new tissue printing systems that are trying to work on being able to literally almost grow organs in microgravity environment. And a variety of other experiments that deal with how the human body reacts to long duration stays in spaceflight.”