On October 5, the day after the ULA launch and not quite setting an Eastern Range record, SpaceX launched four more humans into orbit en route to the International Space Station (ISS).

As always, Crew 5 launched from LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center. This time, Crew Dragon Endurance launched on a brand new booster, 1077. This booster had a bumpy road leading up to launch – literally. On its journey to the SpaceX testing site in McGregor, Texas, the truck carrying it hit a bridge and damaged the rocket. SpaceX repaired and recertified it to NASA’s satisfaction, and the rocket continued launch preps.

The Crew Dragon assigned to Crew 5 was C210 Endurance, making its second flight carrying people to space. Its first was Crew 3, which landed on Earth in May 2022.

After the first stage separation, Booster 1077 landed on the droneship Just Read the Instructions. After spacecraft separation, the crew revealed what has become a standard, their zero-g indicator. This time it was a plush of famous physicist Albert Einstein.

Now let’s talk about those four humans.

The crew arrived in Florida last week after a slight delay due to Hurricane Ian. The four-member crew includes three rookies making their first flights to space, along with legendary JAXA astronaut Koichi Wataka. This is his fifth flight into space, after flying on Shuttle Discovery twice and Endeavour once. At the conclusion of his third mission, which saw him launched on Discovery, he returned to Earth on Endeavour. He became the first person to participate in five crews without returning to Earth: the shuttle he launched on, three ISS expeditions, and the shuttle he landed with.

His fourth trip to orbit was on a Soyuz during Expedition 38, which saw him become the first Japanese person to command the ISS. Cumulatively, he has spent almost an entire year out of the last twenty in space. At the conclusion of this mission, he will have spent almost a year and a half off the planet.

The other three members of the crew included two NASA astronauts: Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada. They were originally assigned to fly on the Boeing Starliner’s crewed flight test but were reassigned after repeated delays to that spacecraft.

This mission means Nicole Mann is the first Native American woman to go into space. Cassada holds a doctorate in physics and was a test pilot in the U.S. Navy. Both are from NASA Astronaut Class 21, all of whom have now flown in space.

The crew is rounded out by Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina. She is the only active female cosmonaut at Roscosmos and just the sixth Russian woman to go into space. And she is the first Russian to launch on an American spacecraft in twenty years.

Endurance is scheduled to dock with the ISS on the evening of October 7 and spend six months on the station. Crew 4 on Crew Dragon Freedom is scheduled to undock and return to Earth on October 12 after a five-day handover period.

Also on October 5, SpaceX launched their 45th mission of 2022, and you don’t even need to guess: it was another batch of Starlinks. This time, it was from SLC-4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in southern California, which had its usual low-level marine layer obscuring the moment of liftoff. Once it cleared the clouds, however, the view was quite impressive.

Like the last Starlink mission, this launch used a relatively new booster, 1071, which had only flown four times previously. The booster successfully landed on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You. The second stage deployed 52 satellites into orbit 1 hour after launch following a two-burn profile.

More Information

NASA press release

Starlink 4-29 mission page (SpaceX)