On October 14th, three people were launched into space from Kazakhstan- NASA Astronaut Kate Rubins along with two Russian Cosmonauts. The trio will spend six months in orbit, but the first week will be with NASA Astronaut Chris Cassidy and two more Cosmonauts on the International Space Station (ISS). Then, on Wednesday October 21st- those three, who have been living on the ISS since April, will board the Soyuz spacecraft that Rubins and her team used to arrive, and head back to Earth. In mid-November, Space-X has another planned launch from US soil that will take four more NASA Astronauts to the ISS for a six month stay. In between these two transports, the ISS will celebrate its 20th anniversary of hosting humans aboard the craft. On October 31, there will have been at least one human living in space for 20 continuous years.

               Rubins is no stranger when it comes to making history. Even the October 14th launch that she participated in added another historic notch to her impressive career as it was the fastest launch to reach the ISS after takeoff… ever. The “ultrafast” boarding of the ISS took just two orbits around the planet before docking onto the station. The flight lasted less than three hours. Compare that to May 30th Space-X launch– that crew spent almost 19 hours in orbit before reaching the docking bay. Rubins, who specializes in studying viral diseases, was also the first person to ever sequence DNA in space. She did this during her first trip off the Earth, back in 2016. For her current stay, she will be researching the space station’s microbial environment with new high-resolution microscopes that were installed since her prior visit. Rubins will also cast her ballot for the presidential election for the second time as she also voted in 2016 from the world’s orbit.

Until Next Time,