Crew-12 Pre-Departure Briefing: Spacewalks, Science and Going Home

Four members of NASA's SpaceX Crew-12 (NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev) held a pre-departure news conference from the International Space Station, answering media questions ahead of their return to Earth. A reporter noted they had called the station home for 7 months.

Spacewalks and repairs

Meir's biggest "eureka" moment came on the final spacewalk, when she rode the Canadarm for the first time. Earlier in the mission the crew had fixed the Canadarm, and on the final spacewalk the others drove her around on it. At the tip of the arm, facing away from the station, she could not see the arm or even her feet and felt she was levitating above the Earth.

Adenot's highlight was hearing from engineering teams that the S-band antenna was installed and working, after two spacewalks trying to fix it. She said she had never expected to do three spacewalks in a row, within a 15-day time frame. Fedyaev spoke of work with the ERA manipulator, moving two cosmonauts and one item during a spacewalk from the SM module to the MRM module.

Science and technology

Hathaway recalled installing an upgrade to the Cold Atom Lab, a quantum mechanics experiment. The part would not fit, and he and Meir spent two or three hours on it before, with the ground team, they partly disassembled it and adapted it so it fit. Cheers came over the space-to-ground loops.

Meir, a biologist, described life sciences glovebox work on neo-cartilage and stem cells. She said previous experiments showed stem cells divide for longer in microgravity, and that fluids were the most challenging part: liquids did not settle at the bottom of tubes, requiring manual centrifugation, and some experiments produced bubbly, surfactant-like material.

Adenot said the Euro suit was at the very first step of its development: she completed donning and doffing, but many points still need improvement. She said the E4D fitness machine was at the end of its commissioning phase and she believed she had built muscle with it.

The crew said they had installed iROSA mod kits on a spacewalk, and that more spacewalks are to come in preparation for the end of station life, while still using the station's science potential fully.

Life on board and the ride up

Adenot hosted three meals for the whole crew from a French dinner designed in partnership with Anne-Sophie Pic. Hathaway named the Cosmic Brownie as a favorite. Fedyaev mentioned cakes made to mark 100, 200, 300 and 400 days.

Hathaway described the Falcon 9 launch: in the last 10 seconds the support structure folds away, the first stage separates and acceleration suddenly stops, and the second stage then lights. The whole ride lasts about 8 and a half minutes.

Meir said this was her first time as commander, and that it was rewarding to watch two crewmates on their first flights. Crew-12 is scheduled to return following a brief handover with Crew-13.