SpaceX Crew-10 Crew Quarters Live Interview

Crew members of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission to the International Space Station participate in a news conference from Astronaut Crew Quarters inside the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday, March 7, 2025. NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, along with JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov are slated to launch from NASA Kennedy as part of the Crew-10 mission no earlier than 7:48 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, March 12, 2025.

What is said in the film

Left on target. But zero g and I feel like. I know that. Whenever I get my quality, we can be on the ground. Numerous abilities are opening up for scientific cooperation between countries who, on their own.

With no American break early phases, discovery players without discovery. No wonder I love coming right here. Go for the morning and. Have had it. Amen.

We are headed back for to get where we are today. Good evening. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to NASA's Kennedy Space Center. I'm Reagan Shafter here in Florida, where NASA's space X crew, ten crew members, are currently quarantining, in astronaut crew quarters ahead of their launch to the International Space Station no earlier than Wednesday, March 12th. Joining us today virtually are commander and McLean pilot Nicole Ayres, Jaxa astronaut Koya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Bischoff.

While aboard the station, the crew is scheduled to conduct material flammability tests for future spacecraft designs. Engage with students via ham radio and use its existing hardware to test a backup lunar navigation solution and participate in an integrated study to better understand physiological and psychological changes to the human body to provide valuable insights for future deep space missions. All said, I know our media partners are eager to speak with the crew, but before we jump into our Q&A, I first want to pass it over to commander and McClain for some opening remarks. Well, good evening from the astronaut quarantine facility here at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The crew, we arrived today from Johnson Space Center in Houston.

And it's really great to be down here. We got to fly in along the coast of Florida and look at the launch pads. And, we're really looking forward to this mission. And to talking to you about it this evening. Our crew of four people, myself and McClain, Nicole Ayres, Colonel Peskov, and took the initiative.

We all come from very different backgrounds, different space agencies. We're, excited to talk to you about our journeys. And just want to give a little bit of a background of this specific crew and our training to get to this point. We were each assigned to the crew ten mission somewhere around the early fall of 2023. So we have been training for about a year and a half for, for this specific mission to the International Space Station.

I know that sometimes it can seem like launch dates move, and and this one certainly has a little bit. But the the mission that we have to the International Space Station has been the driving force and what we have been training for. We are ready to go with, with kind of whatever comes up over the next six months. Raegan, you mentioned some of the science experiments we're going to have planned and unplanned maintenance, to keep the space station running. We have a plethora of science experiments both inside and outside of the space station.

We have spacewalks. We have visiting vehicles, which include robotics. We have the potential of getting private astronaut missions. And so all of this has been included in our preparation. And we're ready to take your questions on, on some of that preparation or anything else, that you'd like to hear about.

I'll jump into our Q&A using our phone bridge. And for those of you on our phone bridge, please make sure to press Star One to jump into our question queue and start to to take yourself back out. And with that, we are going to start with, Chris Seagull. Seagull. And Jim Seagull.

You may go ahead. Yes. Thank you. I'm interested in, any particular, foods, or other, amenities that may that each one of the astronauts. We're, we haven't had, recent, received, in in this, in this particular mission.

Did they request anything in particular? And what would that have been? Thank you. Yeah. I'll take you there.

Yep. I'll take that one. So, we do get, in addition to the standard menu, we get to, choose what we call crew selected menus. So we get to choose almost anything that's from the grocery store that can be considered shelf stable. The food lab can then test it and either approve it or deny it based on microbial growth.

So, actually, one of the things I'm looking forward to most. I found this little pack of, hiking peanut butter, on our recent trip, to the Washington state to the northwest. It's, peanut butter with, like, espresso and chocolate in it. And then I also had some chocolate chips approved. So I'm going to take those chocolate chips, put them on the peanut butter on a spoon, and twirl it around.

It's my niece and nephews favorite snack, so I'm excited to share that with them. Anyone else? I want to echo. I want to echo what Nicole said just said so from my previous experience of spaceflight, I found that, food is really important to relieve, stress and also make our teams, bonded together more strongly. And so I'm bringing some Japanese food to be able to share with my crew members and also, so that, I can get some joy or, relief, from a my, like, routine works on both the station.

So please imagine when you go to, the foreign countries, maybe for the first couple of days, you may look for something new, food. But, once you get used to a new environment, you get tired from the new food, and you might want to add some, local food. You get used to. You use, you get used to. So, the same thing happens in space.

Mr.. Japanese food a lot. So, this time I'm bringing a lot of Japanese food as, as my crew personal, food. So I'm really looking forward to enjoy those Japanese foods. All right.

We will go to our next question, which will be Marcia Dunn. Good evening for. And you've surely been talking to Butch and Sunny. What are they telling you? Are they pushing you to hurry up?

Since they can't leave until you get there? And are you taking any presents or surprises up for them to celebrate the end of their unexpectedly long mission? Yeah, thanks for the question, Marcia. We certainly talked to the crew. Nine astronauts, more and more frequently as we get closer.

You know, we're about to be housemates here in a few days. Their spirits are high. But I you know, it's important to point out that as the mission date was, getting set, there was a swath of a couple months where it could have landed. And as crew members, we don't get tied to any one day. You know, one of my favorite sayings.

You don't really know your space destiny, until it's there. And so, they really are in good spirits. You know, of course, they're ready to come home. And of course, we're ready to launch. But the most important thing is that we do both of those things safely.

All of us take very serious our responsibility to be stewards of the International Space Station. That is a, national orbiting laboratory that is extremely significant for scientific development, for using it as a proving ground for future deep space exploration. And we simply cannot leave it uncrewed or under crewed for any period of time. And that is first and foremost on all of our minds when we go is that level of responsibility. And it's certainly foremost on, on their minds.

Honestly, I'm kind of most looking forward to breaking bread with those guys, talking to them, giving them big hugs. You know, we go way back. We've gone gone camping out in Wyoming with sunny. Butch and I were office mates when we first got here. Of course, Nick and I were classmates, and we flew together last time.

In fact, you know, he flew up, right after I got there. We got to spend a significant portion of our mission together. And so, of course, everybody is ready to, Like I said, we're ready to to go up there. They're ready to come home. But we're not overly tied to to when that happens.

We are really appreciative to our program managers, the NASA space, for making the decision based on technical readiness of the equipment. Okay. Next question goes to Gina Sunseri with ABC news. This question is for an, you know, your space station veteran. Did you make any promises to yourself when you left the last time that you would take something different or take different views when you got back?

What did you decide you do differently? Yeah, that's such an interesting question. I'd like to hear a perspective on that too. My my crewmate, David Saint-Jacques said something that was really poignant on the very last day, when we were there last, our last mission, an expedition 59, and he said, you know, one of us may be back to the space station, but of course, it's never a promise. And if we come back, it's going to be different.

It's going to be a different time. It's going to be a different mission. It's going to be with a different crew on a different vehicle. And we're going to be different people, you know? And the years down the road.

And that was so significant to me because I'm so looking forward to the space station going back to the space station. But I'm very aware that, the space station, it's different. You know, it's very modular. Inside. There's different experiments, there's different stowage, there's, you know, different there's just different, racks in each of the modules that we can go into.

So physically it's going to look different. The crew is going to be different. You know, we've worked together and trained together. It's very different flying up on a, on a US vehicle out of Florida. But, you know, I think the big thing that I reflected back on and what surprised me was what I remembered as the years went on that I found important.

So I think what I'm trying to try to do this mission is really remember the important amidst the urgent, everything is extremely important that we do every day when we get up there and sometimes you forget to step back and look at the people you're sharing it with. You forget to step back and look out the window and and really just take in the significance of, of where you are. So, I think to answer your question directly on this mission, I'm going to really try to savor those little in-between moments, maybe a little more than I did last time. So during my first space flight, I worked very closely with, my lead Jaxa flight directors. And, I thought, that job was much more challenging than I initially thought.

So I, I thought I needed to get to know the, the other side of operations. So I decided to get qualified as a Jaxa flight director. Post-flight. And I went through the training as a flight control team members, and I finally got qualified, and I worked with my colleagues of, Jaxa flight control teams. So now I can say I know the boss size of ISS operations.

So I believe I, I can do a better job for this time. So that's something I really looking forward to for this time. All right. We'll go in. We'll pass it on to Jonathan Saari with Fox.

Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us this evening. My question is for both NASA astronauts, in addition to being a research mission crew ten is also part of the process. The will allow Butch and Sunny to return to Earth. I'd love to hear you share your thoughts on the duality of this mission, or whether you approach it as you would any other space mission. Take that.

Yeah, I think actually you might have said it best about, kind of approaching it as any other mission. You know how Butch and Sunny became members of expedition 72nd May have been different than how each of us were assigned to be members of expedition 73, but the fact is, they are members of expedition 72. Doing all of the same, procedures, maintenance, and tasks that all of our crews do. And so I think that we really look at it as a very typical handover during our handover period, we schedule very distinct activities for the outgoing and the incoming crews to handover duties. They are they are going to be, some of the people that are training us in current space station operations on that handover.

And I think it's important to remember that, space station has been has been in low-Earth orbit for about 25 years and continually crewed during that time. A typical duration, for a space station mission is about six months. But just in the last ten years, we've had five U. S astronauts that have flown over 290 days. And so this so the the duration that Butch and Sunny have been flying is a little bit longer than our typical six months, but it's also not on the higher end of what we've seen over the last ten years.

And so we're looking forward to getting up there. But I think most of all, it's going to be a very typical, and nominal ISS handover. I would just echo what Ann said. I think that rice has program manager said at great, earlier this evening that, we are prepared for almost anything here at NASA that's one of our strengths. We're always ready for with a backup plan.

And so that backup plan turned into our primary plan, where now Butch and Sony have become part of expedition 72. And really excited to high-five them and get the handover from them and take the watch after they go home. All right. We'll go to Will Robinson. Smith with Spaceflight Now.

Hi. Thanks for taking the time to talk with us this evening. Question for Nicole. You're the first member of your astronaut class of flies to head up into space. I wonder, you know, have you had a chance to really talk with your classmates about that?

And are you bringing anything up in honor of the flies? First, for aid to the space station? Thank you for the question. You know, it's an honor to represent my class and be the first one. But I think that all of us were ready at the same time.

And so it could have been any one of us that got picked. And so I'm honored and grateful to be the one, making the first step. I don't want to ruin the surprise. I am flying something for all of them, but I don't want to say it out loud. At this moment, but I am doing some special things for the flies.

And I'm just excited to share the experience with them. You know, there was nothing but love for me when I got announced, for this mission. And, there has been nothing but love and support from my, for my crewmates and my classmates this entire time training. So, it has been, like I said, a true honor and pleasure training with this crew and getting to know all of them, but also continued support from my classmates and excited to, high-five them on orbit as well as we do overs in the future. And we'll pass it on to Miles Duran with CBS news.

Hi. Good evening. For and McLean. We heard your remarks at your arrival this afternoon. You spoke passionately and at length about the importance of the i.

s. s. and of having leaders of good character. And, I wonder what what prompted the idea to to talk about that today? Gosh, I think, you know, I've really been in awe of watching how in the last couple of months, our programs at NASA and the management at SpaceX have been working through some significant technical challenges and always coming out on top.

And it really struck me how, you know, these missions are not easy. They are so complex. And it takes a very large team of people who are doing work that at times are is thankless. You know, there are so many people whose names we don't know who are absolutely the keys to success of in our mission. And I think that I have been very humbled by that.

And so I think as I, as I flew down to as we flew down to Kennedy Space Center this afternoon, I was just thinking about that. I was thinking about, the agency flight readiness review that was going on today. I was thinking about, all of the technicians that have their hands on the rocket on the on the capsule right now. And there are so many people that are getting this ready as as for pilots sitting here, all our background are all pilots were used to preflight our aircraft. You know, we go and we check every single system, every single, every single compartment on the, on the aircraft will open up and look at we look at the logbooks.

We can't do that on on a rocket or on a capsule. We rely on other people to do that. So I think, I think that's what inspired my words, was just kind of coming in with a heart of gratitude for all the people that are really making this mission a success. And we'll go to Josh, dinner with Space. com.

Hi. Thank you. Speaking of checking every system, was the crew consulted or have any input in the decision to swap spacecraft and how was that news received? Yeah. So those decisions are are really made by our program management level.

And I will say that our engineers and our program managers keep the astronaut office and, and the Flight Operations Directorate very, very well abreast of everything that is going on. We're aware of all of the technical issues. But we have entire, commercial crew program. That is really the one that makes those decisions. And I can tell you that one of the things that I've reflected on is the strength of the NASA review and technical review processes.

We look at firsthand data, we analyze it against our own standards. We define it. We have robust and sometimes heated conversations back and forth with people that may or may not agree. And I can tell you that I very much, have faith in the answers that come out of those meetings. We have some extremely, extremely talented people working within NASA and in our commercial partners that are making those decisions.

And we'll go to Mikio Tanabe with NHK. Thank you for taking my question. This question is for all new system. So this would be your second time to stay at the International Space Station, and you will become an ISIS commander, while you were still in the ISS. So can you please talk a little bit about how you are going to play your important role as an ISIS commander, how you will help every crew member accomplish their mission and handle an emergency situation, if it happens.

Thank you. Hi. Thank you for question. So, as you said, I will be the ISS commander for the first half portion of, increment 73. And I'm really looking forward to that new role.

And basically, duties and responsibilities of the ISS commander is, first of all, to make sure that all crew members are safe. And also the international Space Station is also safe. So that's my ultimate goal. As the ISS commander and based on my experience that we went through, some emergency training together in, Houston or in, Moscow, I have already built a strong, trust and also confidence in my crewmates because they are so capable and we are all pilots. So we are so used to like a quickly response to, some, emerging, situations and, following procedures and even if the situation that deviates from our standard procedures, we I also make a couple times that each crew member responded to that new situation, then, kind of swapping their roles independently.

So I'm super confident in my crewmates. So it should be everything should be, good for us then. As the commander, I want to make sure that everybody is happy with, my, decisions. So I, I will try to make sure that, I listen to, everybody's opinions to before I make any decisions. And also, I'm always be, open to any feedback from you guys.

So thank you very much. And we'll pass it to Paige Reynolds with kr. tv. Hi. Congratulations to you.

All. My questions for Nicole. Can you just describe how your upbringing in Colorado Springs and Woodland Park, both schooling and the community, has guided you to where you're at today? Yeah. Thank you for the question.

I love to highlight, Colorado. It's one of my favorite places. I grew up there. You know, as a child, I always had an affinity for the sky and flying and for space. And then growing up right there in Colorado next to the Air Force Academy during the shuttle era when I learned you could fly the shuttle, I was like, oh, so that's what I want to do.

I want to be a pilot in the Air Force and the Air Force Academy right there with the Thunderbirds flying over every year. It was just a natural decision for me. But one of my favorite parts about growing up in Colorado is the exploring and the ability to go hiking and camping and kind of figuring out how to live in austere places, which is turned out to be a great analog for what we're training to do here and now. And then, you know, I grew up, I went to middle school in Colorado Springs and then high school in Woodland Park, and was able to learn a ton about math. That's kind of my favorite subject.

I'm a little bit of a nerd. I was a math major in college, and, my master's degrees in math as well. So just growing up in that environment and then also the schooling where I was able to really excel and advance in math and get to the Air Force Academy, and then played sports my whole time there as well. So, plenty of opportunities in Colorado, both outside and inside the school system. And it really set me up for success, to get where I am today.

All right. And we'll go to Austin. Zach, with our MTV. Yes. Hello.

I wish you all the best on your mission. This question is also for Nicole. Kind of similar, you know, your ties to Colorado, but I was hoping you could expand and share as much as you can. But the level of training that you had to go through to make it to this point, obviously, being there for the Academy, you went through similar training or somewhat similar to. So what was maybe the difficult part of training to be an astronaut?

And if you had a tip for any younger community members growing up who had dreams to follow your shoes one day? Sure. Yeah. That is a wonderful question. You know, going to the Air Force Academy.

It's a military academy, obviously. So you go through basic training and then went through a lot of different programs while I was there. I then went on to get a master's degree and went on to pilot training. And then I learned how to fly the T-38, and then I learned how to fly the F-22. So each of those are formal courses, for the Air Force.

And then I came here and started the formal course, the initial training for us, as an Afghan. So two years of initial training, followed by a year to year and a half of training for this mission. So, I like to say that I've been, just living in a training environment for most of my career, but I've learned a ton. And I'm excited to go execute this mission. And I think that the what I would say is that one of the most challenging parts of our training here in Asian training is the Neutral Buoyancy Lab.

And learning how to do a spacewalk. You know, as an F-22 pilot, we were kind of on the operational tip of the spear in the military, and now we get to go do things that are on the operational tip of the spear for humanity and go out, into the vacuum of space in a spacesuit that is basically like a small spacecraft. And so it's just you and your buddy out there and you're working to fix something that broke on the space station. And if you run into a problem, it's on you guys to work with the ground team to come up with a good game plan to fix it. And so it was one of the most challenging and rewarding parts of, the training here at NASA.

And then the thing that I would say to everybody that I always say to everybody and all the little kids out there is, you know, find something you're passionate about. I mentioned I, I love math, that took me pretty far in academics. And I loved flying. And so find something you're passionate about, go work really hard at it. Get good at it.

And then surround yourself with good people, because you're probably going to be on a team somewhere. So, I always say be a good teammate. Be a good human and work hard, and you'll get anywhere you want in life. Okay. Next question comes from Pablo Fuente.

Hi. Thank you for doing this. My question is for, it is my understanding that the handover is going to last two days instead of five, considering that you talk rookies on this flight. Do you guys do some prep work out there? To be able to work through that process efficiently?

Thank you. Yeah, that's a great question on the handover, I appreciate that. And of course, as was mentioned in the mission management, press conference right before us, it will be a, potentially a shorter handover. So first I want to say something about the, the, capabilities of our first time fliers. And that is if, if these first time fliers, if nobody was on space station and we weren't with them, they could absolutely go up and do the space station mission.

Would it take a few more calls to the ground? Yes. Would some mistakes be made? Maybe here and there. But I will tell you that, efficiency is what we're really going after our during this handover period.

Because time is money on space station, astronaut crew time is expensive, and we want to be as efficient as possible, as quickly as possible. And so the question for handover, it's not one of safety. It's not one of mission accomplishment. It's how efficient can we get. So space station does change around on the inside a little bit.

And so even, Takuya and I, the veterans of the space station, we're going to need to go in and see, kind of how how how they're doing things right now, make sure we can fall into the mission in that way. But it's also important to remember we have another crew member up there. Don Pettit, is our Soyuz crew member, and they are not doing a handover until April. So even though crew nine will return, we will have somebody that has been up there since last fall that can show us the ropes and show us any gaps in our knowledge. And we certainly have enough time with crew nine, with with Nick Hague in particular to get a really good Dragon docked operation handover.

So, I don't think the shortened handover is going to be any problem. And, and certainly everybody on the crew is ready to execute. All right. Next question comes from Robert Pearlman with Collectspace. Thank you.

Two questions about symbols for your mission to any crew member that's appropriate. First, NASA made note that you designed your mission patch first by using I mean, you describe that process, what prompted you to give it? And secondly, until you swapped capsules, I think you're in the position to name the Space X's new dragon. Did you pick out a name already? And you know that that name will stick, or does that now fall to its next crew?

I'll take the first part of that question. So I was one of the masterminds behind the patch here. And, you know, as I sat down to try to think I'm not an artist, I said, if I'm a mathematician. So, as I sat down to try to think of what our crew, who our crew is and what we want to represent, you know, this day and age, AI is a really cool tool that we get to use to kind of help us brainstorm things. And so my husband and I sat down and we just started typing out things in an AI image generator, and eventually came up with a few ideas that I liked, pulled from those, and then sat down with an artist and really discussed the vision for the patch, which is in the rest of that patch description.

You know, we wanted to highlight the fact that all four of us are professionally trained pilots, which is why the wings are featured, on the patch and then the ascending and descending trajectory in the form of a Roman numeral X for crew ten. There's ten sides to the patch. There's all sorts of, meaning in the patch. And so it was just kind of a booster for the brainstorm, which then kickstarted, our discussions as a crew on what we wanted in the patch, and then sat down with an artist, and our artist took what I said to him, ran with it, and came out with this amazing and beautiful patch that we're all very proud of. Amazing.

Oh, sorry. And where you're going to finish there? Yeah. Just to get the second half of that question, it has become kind of a tradition that the first crew to fly on a spacecraft, gets to name it, so yes, we had thought about it. But maybe even more significantly, we had been lobbied by many different people who had ideas for us.

Would like to recognize our excellent flight director, Allison, and her Athena flight flight control team. She was really gotten for that name. We're not going to share what we would have, named the capsule, but we have told the next couple crews that may potentially fly it. We are now the lobbyists, lobbying them to name it, give it our name. So TBD.

All right. We'll go over to Nicholas Gibson with Action News. Hi, there. This is Nick Gibson with the Spokesman-Review. Sorry about that.

And and to Clea, this will be a return trip for you. So I'm curious what perspectives or life lessons stayed with you from your last dance? And for Carol and Nicole, how do you think this experience might change you? Thank you. Okay, so in addition to, my experience as a J.

Jackson flight director, so I flew to the International Space Station in 2016. So it's been already nine years. And since then, I'm sure there, there there are a lot of, like, progresses in, our operations or operational systems as well as our research. So I really want to see those progresses and, operations and research. I think one of the lessons that I took from last time was, kind of a level of, technical proficiency that you have to operate, in every single day.

But at the same time, how much you rely on your crew members? As soon as our crew is named, I think I flashback to my last flight and and remembered how the crew that I flew with, they are. They are my brothers and sisters. You know, I still get a huge smile on my face every time I see them in the hallway. And I realize, you know, these are the people that I'm going to build that same relationship with while we all get to, one live at a dream and two, we get to be operators on this amazing equipment, both flying up there on a SpaceX Dragon and being part of the space station crew.

So I think I was really humbled by the magnitude of the experience. Well, answering my part of question, I think it's hard to predict how this flight will change me, but I'm sure that I will get a wonderful experience. And, a lot of experience that, I'll be able to apply in future missions and, hopefully we will have some future projects together. And build some more science. And I think, for me, I'm excited about The view, getting to see the world from that perspective.

But I've talked a lot about teams, this evening, and I'm excited to share the experience with this team, but also to see the team that we are on the on the ground. You know, there are no borders. You can't see borders from the space station. So I'm excited to see how all of us individuals form into one world, while we're up there. Okay.

Next question is from Jackie Carter with the Times. Hello. Thank you. And you said earlier, when you arrive that you rely on the media to be telling your stories. And there's been quite a story woven around your mission.

So after you've rescued Butch and Sunny, for each of you, what is the activity or project or experiment that you're most looking forward to that will define your part in the space station story? Thank you. So. I think for me, I'm most excited about all of the human science that I, that I volunteered for. You know, we don't get to learn anything about the human body in space unless an astronaut has volunteered for that to experiment.

And so I'm most excited to, you know, donate my, my body to science and, you know, I'm involved in a cartilage, study, a bone study, an eye study. So all sorts of different things, that we're going to learn just from living in space for a long duration. And, you know, I'm excited to see how we use all of those experiments to then get on to the moon and on to Mars and how we use that. An extrapolate that data into longer duration missions as we, continue to explore further outside of our atmosphere and, and onto the universe. I think one of the things I'm looking forward to is, seeing the advancement in technology and science since the last flight.

You know, it's it's easy to say SpaceX has been flying for 25 years. It benefits everybody on Earth. But when you were living it year to year to year, you see these, like, logarithmic leaps in our ability to do science on the space station. And every single year that space station flies, there is more benefit to everybody on Earth. One of those that I'm looking forward to is our protein crystal growth, experiments that we are running on space station.

It is a similar type of experiment, but it's being run in a completely different manner now than it was five years ago. Five years ago, we were saying, could we grow crystals on space station? And now we're saying, wow, we can go crystals on space station. How can we maximize these to better cancer research? The better Parkinson's research?

Cancer immunotherapy drugs? Ten years ago, if if you were doing if you got cancer, the robust, benefits of immunotherapy and Keytruda were not as known as they are now. The rate at which we were able to learn about those was significantly increased on space station. So I think what I'm looking really forward to is kind of comparing how we do things now to what we did five years ago, and then being part of one of those breakthrough experiments that is going to happen on 2025. And, we're going to find out what that is when we're there.

So, one of the experiments I'm really looking forward to is called elf. Elf. That means, electrostatic levitation harness. So instead of, building a harness with, thick metal walls on the ground, we use, electrostatic force to levitate the sample and, also control its position. And we use lasers to heated up to 30,000°C.

To understand how, the materials samples behave at such a high temperatures, such as, viscosity and surface tension and so on, we can use the same technology on the ground. But, the range of materials we can levitate is very limited on the ground because of the existence of the gravity. So that's why we do this experiment in space, then, the reason why I'm really looking forward to this experiment is, in 2016, I worked on the initial check out of this experiment device, and, it has we have been, going through a lot of technical challenges with this device initially, because it was so difficult and challenging than we thought initially to precisely control the tiny, tiny piece of, sample using, electrostatic force. But we made some adjustment to our, software. And also, we made some, adjustments or developed a new piece of hardware for, for modification.

There. Now it's it became a super, active. It's one of the most active experiment, machines working on the, working in the Japanese, expanding model right now, so I, I can't wait, working on, that experiment device again. Our next question comes from UK Tomishima. Hi.

Thank you for taking my question. I have two quick questions for Mr. Onishi. I remember that you clearly stated your ambition to land on the moon shortly after the US Japan agreement to send Japanese astronauts to the moon. I would have to ask you again about your current thoughts and motivations on future lunar mission.

The second question is that over the decade, you have been one of the youngest astronauts in Jaxa since you, selected I Still Don't candidate in 2009. Now to you, astronaut joint Jackson, are there any changes in your mind after having junior colleagues? Astronaut. Thank you. Thank you for the question.

So, yeah, as, as an astronaut, of course. I want to go to the moon if I get a chance, but I'm sure everybody wants to the same thing. Then everybody is also trying to do their best to achieve the goal. So I think it is important to try to always do my best in any situation that I was. I'm given so yeah, of course I'm.

I always, dream about going to the moon, but, right now I just focus on the my current mission. This, iss expedition 7273 and by, achieving, by showing our team's capabilities throughout the mission could lead up to, achieving my charitystream in the future. So that's my goal for now. And, as you mentioned, we have now two new ice cans, in Jaxa. There they are already, my good friends.

So I know they are so capable and also they are still young. My children young. One of one of them is much younger than me. So I guess, she has much more chances than I because, I'm getting old and I don't know, how much time I have left in order to, make my dream come true. So, I wish them, best luck in the, future explorations.

And also the first future space missions as well. All right, next question goes to Sergei. You might have. Hi, everyone. My question is actually for Kirill.

Q how do you know how to be, first spaceflight, and have you received any tips for your Roscosmos colleagues who have already flown on, Crew Dragon spacecraft? Yeah, I just final question, but them. Yep. I got a couple. All right.

I think that will go ahead and conclude today's crew news conference. Again, I want to extend a huge thank you to our crew, as well as all of our media partners who have dialed in today. And for everyone of you who tuned in today using NASA plus coverage of crew ten, launch begins at 3:45 p. m. eastern, with launch at 7:48 p.

m. eastern. And with that go crew ten go NASA, and we'll see you next time.

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