Nasa and SpaceX are gearing up to launch their next rotational crew to the International Space Station. At 11:51 am (IST) on October 31, the Crew-3 will launch for the flying outpost (IST).

While this marks the third crew rotation mission with astronauts on the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, it is the fourth flight with astronauts, including the Demo-2 test flight, under the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.

SpaceX, led by Elon Musk, will launch the four astronauts on a Falcon 9 rocket Launch Complex 39A at Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The spacecraft is scheduled to dock with the station the following day.

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The four-person crew will spend six months onboard the microgravity laboratory doing experiments that will push the boundaries of human space exploration. For a brief time, the team will collaborate with Crew-2 astronauts and members of Expedition 66 currently onboard the ISS, taking over the work.

Nasa astronauts Raja Chari, mission commander; Tom Marshburn, pilot; Kayla Barron, mission specialist; and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer, who will act as a mission specialist, will be carried to the space station on the Crew-3 flight for a six-month science mission.

On October 16, the four members were quarantined for the mission. The quarantine is a standard operation that is carried out as part of the final preparations for all space station missions. The crew will spend the final two weeks before liftoff in quarantine, according to Nasa, to ensure their health and that of the astronauts already aboard the space station. 

Meanwhile, due to the coronavirus pandemic, additional precautions are being taken, with Chari, Marshburn, Barron, and Maurer, as well as those in direct, close contact with the crew, being tested twice for the virus as a precaution.

“With the Crew-3 launch date adjustment, return of Crew-2 with NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, and ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet, currently is planned for early November with splashdown of Crew Dragon Endeavour at one of seven landing zones off the coast of Florida,” Nasa said in a blog post.

This is Indian American astronaut Raja Chari‘s first flight. He was chosen as the mission’s commander in 2020 and said he was proud to be working and training with Matthias Maurer and Thomas Henry Marshburn.

Chari was born in Milwaukee, while his hometown is Cedar Falls, Iowa. A colonel in the US Air Force, he brings vast experience as a test pilot to the operation. Nasa claimed Chari has acquired more than 2,500 hours of flight time throughout his career in a statement outlining his profile.