NASA Excited To Fly International Crew, Works Hard To Ensure Vehicle Safety - Official

CAPE CANAVERAL (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 05th October, 2022) NASA is very excited to fly international crew on a commercial vehicle, and is doing its utmost to ensure safety, Commercial Crew Launch Vehicle Systems Office Deputy Manager, Lisa McCollum, told Sputnik.

"We are very excited, of course, to be flying international crews on commercial crew, we work very hard to make sure that our vehicles are safe," McCollum said. "And so it's a great honor for us to be able to acquire international partners and to have our international partners trust in us to do that."

McCollum spoke on the eve of NASA's launch of the SpaceX Crew-5 mission with US and Japanese astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut to the International Space Station (ISS).

When asked whether it is more difficult to train the crew nowadays when there are so many different spaceships like Dragon, Soyuz, and Starliner, McCollum said, "My expertise is mostly in the launch vehicles. I know that our crew is cross training on multiple vehicles so that they can support as many missions as are required.

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The Crew-5 flight will carry NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, who will serve as mission commander and pilot, respectively, along with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina, who will serve as mission specialists.

The launch is scheduled for noon EDT (1600 GMT) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

In July, Roscosmos and NASA signed an agreement on integrated flights of cosmonauts and astronauts to the ISS. As part of the agreement, the Soyuz-2.1a rocket with a Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft was launched from Baikonur to the ISS on September 21 carrying another crew including Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin as well as NASA astronaut Francisco Rubio. The only female cosmonaut at Roscosmos, Kikina, will fly to the ISS on the US-made Crew Dragon spacecraft on Wednesday.