NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 Mission Overview

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission will carry NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov to the International Space Station. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft will launch from Space Launch Complex 40 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on the company’s ninth crew rotation mission for NASA. Upon return, Hague and Gorbunov will be joined by NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams in the two available seats. Learn more about the crew and mission: https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/commercial-crew/what-you-need-to-know-about-nasas-spacex-crew-9-mission/

What is said in the film

The mission hasn't changed in 25 years. It's to get to the space station, conduct research and come home. How we’re going to do that is going to look a little bit different. Alex and myself are going to launch with two empty seats, so we've got room for Butch and Suni to join us once we get there. They've been on orbit months already, and one of the biggest challenges ahead for Alex and I, one of the most exciting aspects, is how are we going to integrate into their crew and get to work on the space station doing the research and performing the spacewalks and the station upgrades and helping us continue that mission of discovery.

The International Space Station is this unique place that we have built over the course of a decade, with 100 launches and 100 spacewalks to assemble it on orbit. It lets us remove gravity from all of our science experiments. You've all seen video of balls of water floating around and morphing, and we can do that with other materials and see what properties we aren't able to see when gravity just squashes everything flat. That knowledge helps us make life better on the ground. I've had the privilege of spending more than 200 days on the International Space Station, and what is crystal clear to me is how important the international is in the International Space Station.

Together, we accomplish more than we could by ourselves. Together we tackle all the problems that that dynamic nature of space throws at us. The more we explore, the more we try to overcome all those challenges of living in weightlessness, in a high radiation environment, and how to counteract those things, the more we learn about how the human body works, but a long duration mission is something really to cherish because it's a unique opportunity to let your body fully adapt. And then at some point, you reach this kind of steady state where you are working and living in space, and that's your normal. Spaceflight is hard, it's dynamic, it's unpredictable.

But that's no different than the way it's always been. And just being able to watch the agency navigate those decisions over the last several months and balance the risk and the safety of the crew has been phenomenal. And what is crystal clear in that entire process is the commitment to making sure that when we launch crews, we're going to bring them home safe. I'm excited to get back to the space station. I'm excited to be part of Expedition 72, so we can get to work, because that's what this is all about.

It's about exploration, exploring the human body, exploring Earth, exploring the universe. It's about discovery. It's about learning. It's about how do we imagine the impossible? And make it possible?

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