Peggy Whitson ISS mission extention

NASA announced this week that Astronaut Peggy Whitson, who has already set several space flight records and will soon break Scott Kelly’s record for most time in space by a US Astronaut, will be staying on the International Space Station for an additional three months.

Originally scheduled to return home in June this year with her crewmates Oleg Novitskiy and Thomas Pesquet she will instead transition to the Expedition 52 crew and return home with Fyodor Yurchikhin and Jack Fischer in September.

This was possible because Russia has now switched to a two cosmonaut crew rotation plan, this would have meant that only two people would have been on the station after Peggy and her crew left in June.  This extension will allow the station to keep a full complement of people on the station allowing them to continue the same level of science investigations that has been established recently.

When Peggy returns home in September she will have the third longest consecutive stay on the ISS a record that was set last year by Scott Kelly and Mikhail Korniyenko when they spent 340 days aboard the station.


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One response to “Peggy Whitson ISS mission extention”

  1. […] vehicle returns in September it will be carrying three crew members back to Earth as NASA Astronaut Peggy Whitson will be staying on the station to ensure a three person crew […]

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