NASA's SpaceX Crew-11 Arrival - 4K

NASA's SpaceX Crew-11 NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov arrive Saturday, July 26, 2025, at the Launch and Landing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to prepare for their mission to the International Space Station.

What is said in the film

Good afternoon everyone. Exciting day here at Kennedy Space Center as we welcome the crew. 11 flight crew ahead of their liftoff on a mission to the International Space Station. I am Steve Siceloff with NASA's Office of Communication. And with us having just arrived from Houston, we have NASA astronauts.

Commander Zena Cardman, pilot Mike Fincke, JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov. We're going to hear from the crew in just a minute and also take a take a few media questions from the group here gathered at the runway. Liftoff of the crew 11 mission is slated for Thursday, July 31st at 12:09 p. m. Eastern Time.

You'll be able to watch that on NASA plus and on NASA's streaming channels. And with that, I will hand it over to Zena. Good afternoon everyone. We are absolutely joined to be here at Kennedy Space Center. It's wonderful to see everyone who's here in person.

And thank you so much to those tuning in remotely. It's my privilege to be here with our wonderful crew. Mike, Kimiya, Oleg have been fantastic teammates this entire time. We've been training together for over a year now, and we are ready to fly Kennedy Space Center, landing here at the shuttle Landing Facility. For me personally, as a first time flier, this is the first moment when it's really starting to feel real.

This is the beginning of a week when things will feel progressively more and more real as we approach our launch, currently slated for the 31st. This is also a place of incredible history, and I'm so honored to be here with a crew taking part in this long history of human spaceflight. I am a first time flier, but we have the privilege of flying with people who have flown before and seen the International Space Station growing from its very beginning. It will be our honor to join expedition 73 on board the International Space Station, and to be there for the 25th anniversary of the ISS It's so special to take part in something as grand as this human spaceflight endeavor that takes so many people, many of whom have flown here with us today, many of whom are at home in Houston or in our other homes around the world, from Japan, from Russia and all of our training centers across the globe, including Cologne and in Hawthorne, California. Thank you so much to those of you who are here.

And I want to leave it to my crewmates to say a few more words. We look forward to taking your questions. Thank you so much. Come on. Boy, it's great to be back.

And, And it was great to, like Zena said, to land on the at the shuttle landing facility. One of the last times I landed on the at the SLF was, on a space shuttle on endeavor. And now we get to go on another endeavor. Dragon endeavor, this time. And, what a great crew to to launch with.

I've been on different crews before, but this one is exceptional. Zena, you wouldn't know that. She's a first time flier. She brings in so much experience and compassion as a commander. Kimiya Yui from Japan.

Fellow, experience guy. Really He always had something wise to say. And Oleg Platonov, his sense of humor is even funnier than mine, so I got to take some notes. He's, he's a great guy to fly with. So this is a great crew.

We're looking forward to, to launching soon. I've been, like to throw out a few extra thanks. Like, as Ina said, we are, a humble and grateful crew. That's, kind of some of our our mottos, but we really, we really want to say thanks to, the the teams that got us ready, the teams from space and are also to the commercial crew program, who worked extra hard to get us on on time so that we can support the International Space Station program for all the fantastic things that are going on with the space station, I'm personally looking forward to to, going back up to the space station, I helped build it, and now I'm going to get to, see it in its full maturity with, six other crewmates. So without further ado, again, thank you for being here.

Sorry for the heat, but it's Florida in the summertime. It's pretty nice. And, here's my good friend, Kimiya Yui Thank you for coming. I'm Kimiya Yui I'm so grateful to be here as a part of this great team. Crew 11 I believe this crew 11 member is a one of the best ever.

And I like this crew member because we respect each other each other's any cultural differences, language differences. Quite international. And I think during this mission, we will be able to show a good example of like international cooperation because of this very international good, great team. And we trained together a long time. So we are we are ready like my hair hairstyle.

So I'm looking forward to fly with these great crew members. And also I'd like to say thank you to everybody who is supporting this mission without, everybody's help. We cannot fly. And, my motto is guts and hard work. So I'd like to I do my best for, mission success.

And I work hard for the people who is supporting everybody, including you guys, actually. Thank you very much, guys. Hello, everybody. My name is Oleg Platonov, and I am mission specialist two for our crew. Crew 11, and this is my honor to be here in where so unique and historical place.

And I'm very glad to be here. And I'd like to say thank you very much to NASA, to SpaceX and to Roscosmos for this unique opportunity. And I have very super great crew and I believe and I hope as soon as possible and on time we will be and SpaceX Crew-11, GO! Thank you everyone. We are going to open it up now, for media questions, if you have a question, please come up to the microphone.

Please limit it to one question per outlet. And, we'll start with you. Hi, Richard Tribune, Richard, Jimmy with Orlando Sentinel. This question is for Zena You were supposed to be the penultimate member of your at least NASA sea turtle class to make the space. That didn't quite happen.

But since you will be the last of the NASA side for turtles, is there anything special related to that that you have planned, that they have planned? And what is next for your class? Thanks. Hey, thanks for the question. Yes, of course, in spaceflight the journey is often non-linear.

It's just a privilege to be here with this crew especially. I have the privilege of overlapping with one of my classmates, Johnny Kim, who's currently on board as a member of expedition 73. I also have the privilege of flying with Kimiya Yui whose patch has a turtle on it, and so that makes him an honorary turtle in my heart. And of course, I'm just the last of the U. S members of my turtle class.

We have Canadian classmates as well, who I hope to see in orbit soon. It's it's such a journey. And I think although, of course, for crew nine, I had many hopes. The only thing that mattered was getting the crew home safely. And I think we all did our part together to make that happen.

Hi. Will Robinson Smith with Spaceflight Now. Good to see you all again. Question for Mike, if I may. Since you've been, you know, foundational in the commercial Crew program since the go in 2014, I wonder now, you know, that you're getting to fly as part of crew 11, if you can kind of step back and look at, you know, these past, 11 crew rotation missions, the work that's been done both on the space side and the Boeing side that you've been involved in so thoroughly and just kind of your sense of where we are right now and where we're going.

Thanks Yeah, I have lots of thoughts on that. And, I'll try to keep it short and sweet. When we retired the space shuttle, we had the promise and the hope, to continue human spaceflight, with, with the American, rockets and spaceships. We didn't know what they're going to look like. We came up, in 2014 here at the Kennedy Space Center.

We made the announcement for the commercial crew program, t cap, contract, which, we named two surprisingly, Boeing and, SpaceX. Competitors and partners to, to help us get to the space station. And it's been a really interesting journey watching brand new spaceships be built. We had some great ideas, when we released t cap. And what ended up, was, was a little bit different.

But I'm very proud of of our teams. Both SpaceX and Boeing. To, to what they've, what we've built together. And, I'm really proud to actually finally fly on a commercial crew, spacecraft and, and of course, I was part of the Boeing Starliner story. And, that's a different story for a different day.

But, I'm looking forward. There's a good possibility for Starliner to be on board at the same time as us. And, it's a really a privilege and honor to know so many different spacecraft. And I'm very proud of our American industry partners for building, some really fine space flying machines. And, I'm really excited about Dragon Endeavor.

Who can imagine that we were going to fly them six times or even more, right? The capsules from, from space. So, go crew 11 and go, go endeavor. Hi This question is for Yui, and you'll be meeting Onison What do you hope to talk about? When then when you first see him in orbit.

Thank you. Yes. You know, of course, he told me about, vegetables. I don't like vegetables so I don't want him to see that. But first thing, I just really want to see, like, Like, I mean, when you see Onison, he's my best friend.

And it's very good the opportunity to see my friends on orbit. And, of course, I just want to do a lot of, like, interesting experiments on orbit. And also, I just want to work with other people. Not only in Japan, but all over the world and looking forward to do, well, a lot of fruitful result in this mission. Thank you.

Hello. My name is Andy from Exploration Spatial. A question for Zena or for anyone on the grid I would like to answer. We know that this mission is going to take a little bit longer to dock with the space station. Could you go into a few details on on why it is the case?

Yeah, sure. That's really dictated by things like orbital dynamics. And we are where we are. The space station is where it is. And depending on its altitude and the phasing that we need to get there determines, how long our phasing is.

That's a really roundabout way of saying we don't decide, but we're happy to be flying. There are limits, of course, on that duration, for many reasons. But we're within those limits, and we trust the teams that have gotten us ready. Hi, I'm Greg with Earth Sky. My question is for Mike.

From your experience in space, what has been the most significant negative effect that your body has undergone? I think I lost some hair over the years. Maybe it was space. Who knows? So, I'm going to answer your question a little differently than, maybe the way it was asked.

What I'm really proud about with the International Space Station. When we first started, we were really worried about bone loss. We had some crew members coming back from, earlier space stations and who hadn't exercised. And we spent a lot of time and effort figuring out how to have countermeasures against bone loss. And, we, on my first mission, I used an interim resistive exercise device.

I read, and that helped. But once we got the a read, and I very, proud to be one of the two folks that helped put it together. First time myself and Sandy Magnus, the a read advanced resistive exercise device has really helped people with bone loss. It still is an issue, but it's no longer as scary to, the NASA physiologists and and it helps us understand what we need to do to be ready to go to Moon and Mars. So I'm very proud of it.

I got, because I was, one of the first guys ever use it. And, I'm proud of what we've been able to, to learn, about, about, humans living in space because we are going out to the moon and we are going to Mars, and we know what we're doing now. Hi, my name's Jan Jack McGill. I'm with mind that connects TV. And this question is for each one of you in in the morning, your wake up alarm.

Do you guys have music or are you. No. No nonsense with just the buzzer. If you can respond to. I, I'm a no nonsense kind of person.

Otherwise I might not ever get out of bed. I'm the kind of person who likes to hit snooze. Unfortunately. Hi. Derek Newsome with Derek Space.

com. You mentioned this being the sixth flight of Crew Dragon. Endeavor, which had originally only been certified for up to five flights, could you detail some of the changes that had to be made, between its last flight and now to increase that certification and potentially look for future missions? Yeah, really not a lot of changes specifically, other than making sure that each and each individual component is ready to go. Of course, the Dragon capsules get refurbished after every single flight.

And so this one, because it's pushing the limits, it's the leader as far as experience for capsules, we're just being extra careful to make sure that we certify the entire vehicle, every detail from the inside out, which is really amazing. It takes a huge team of people to do this. They've been working nonstop for many months now. So with deep gratitude to that team for making sure that we'll be safe to fly. And that was our last question today.

Thank you so much. Again, this is the, crew, 11 crew. They are heading to the International Space Station. Their liftoff is targeted for Thursday, July 31st, 12:09 p. m.

Eastern time. You'll be able to watch that countdown and lift off on NASA plus and on NASA's social media channels. You'll also be able to watch the whole week's, countdown and pre-launch activities on NASA social channels and@nasa. gov. Thank you everyone.

Have a good afternoon and go crew 11.

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