Expedition 68: Crew-5 Images—Then & Now | International Space Station

Expedition 68: Crew-5 Images—Then & Now | International Space Station

Flight Engineer Nicole Mann works on life support maintenance inside the International Space Station's Destiny laboratory module

Flight Engineers Nicole Mann of NASA and Koichi Wakata of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) 

Flight Engineers Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann

NASA astronaut and Flight Engineer Josh Cassada is pictured bundled up in his crew quarters

Expedition 68 Flight Engineers (from left to right) Dmitri Petelin and Anna Kikina of Roscosmos (Russia)

From left, Expedition 68 Flight Engineers Koichi Wakata of JAXA (Japan) and Sultan Alneyadi of the United Arab Emirates

Expedition 68 Commander Sergey Prokopyev (Russia) from Roscosmos and Flight Engineer Koichi Wakata

Flight Engineer Josh Cassada of NASA is seated in a specialized chair in the International Space Station's Columbus laboratory module for the GRIP human research experiment

March 9, 2023 Update: Four Expedition 68 crew members are nearing the end of their stay aboard the International Space Station this weekend. Their replacements are completing their first week aboard the orbital outpost and getting up to speed with life in space.

The SpaceX Crew Dragon Endurance with four crewmates is targeted to depart the space station at 2:05 a.m. EST on Saturday, March 11, 2023, and return to Earth less than 24 hours later. NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada will command and pilot Endurance respectively flanked by Koichi Wakata of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Anna Kikina of Roscosmos (Russia). The foursome is due to splashdown off the coast of Florida at 9:19 p.m. on Saturday.

The quartet blasted off toward the orbiting lab as the SpaceX Crew-5 mission on Oct. 5, 2022, and docked to the Harmony module’s forward port on Oct. 6. A variety of crew ships and space freighters arrived and departed, numerous spacewalks were conducted, and a multitude of advanced space research took place during Crew-5’s five-month-long stay in space.

The station’s newest crew members are several days into their orbital residency after their arrival on March 3, as the SpaceX Crew-6 mission. The new flight engineers, Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg of NASA, Sultan Alneyadi of the United Arab Emirates), and Andrey Fedyaev of Roscosmos (Russia), have already begun a variety of space research and lab maintenance activities.

Follow Expedition 68 crew updates at: https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/

An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada. The ISS has been the most politically complex space exploration program ever undertaken.

Image Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC)

Image Dates: Oct 5, 2022-March 4, 2023

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