Dragon hatch closure and unberth is scheduled for January 12 with release scheduled on January 13.
Dragon will be depart the station Saturday at 5 a.m. EST loaded with science experiments and station cargo and parachute to a splashdown off the coast of California at 10:36 a.m.
This could be followed by a two-SRB Atlas 5 on the first planned uncrewed test flight of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft to the ISS on August 27, likely in the early morning EDT if that date.
This morning, the NanoRacks External Platform (NREP) was reinstalled on the outside of the International Space Station, initiating the commercial platform’s third customer mission.
Targeted Test Flight Dates:Boeing Orbital Flight Test (uncrewed): August 2018Boeing Crew Flight Test (crewed): November 2018SpaceX Demonstration Mission 1 (uncrewed): August 2018SpaceX Demonstration Mission 2 (crewed): December 2018
January 12, 2018...Dragon was robotically detached from the Earth-facing side of the station’s Harmony module today at 5:47 p.m.
January 13, 2018...Ground controllers released the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft from the International Space Station’s robotic arm at 4:58 a.m. EST. The capsule will begin a series of departure burns and maneuvers to move beyond the “keep out sphere” around the station for its return trip to Earth.Dragon’s thrusters will be fired to move the spacecraft a safe distance from the station before SpaceX flight controllers in Hawthorne, California, command its deorbit burn about 9:43 a.m. The capsule will splashdown about 10:36 a.m. in the Pacific Ocean
Expedition 54 Flight Engineer Mark Vande Hei of NASA will lead both excursions, joined by Flight Engineer Scott Tingle for the spacewalk on Tuesday, Jan. 23, and by Flight Engineer Norishige Kanai of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) on Monday, Jan. 29. Live coverage will begin at 5:30 a.m., with the spacewalks beginning about 7:10 a.m. or earlier, if the crew is running ahead of schedule.The objective of the Jan. 23 spacewalk will be to replace one of two redundant latching end effectors (LEE) on Canadarm2, the station’s robotic arm, which has experienced some degradation of its snaring cables. A spare LEE will replace the current LEE B. The Jan. 29 spacewalk will be devoted to securing the degraded LEE B on the station’s Mobile Base System rail car as a spare. Similar work was conducted on the robotic arm’s LEE A during a series of spacewalks last October.These excursions, U.S. spacewalks 47 and 48, will be the third and fourth in Vande Hei’s career and the first for both Tingle and Kanai.
Gerst: once cmrcl crew available, will still fly US astronauts on Soyuz and Russian cosmonauts on our vehicles bc always need at least one Russian and one American on ISS to operate it. But won't be buying any addl Soyuz seats.
Gerst -- Russian cosmonauts on cmrcl crew vehicles, and US astronauts on Soyuz at that time, will be on no exchange of funds basis. Will be an American on every Soyuz, and a Russian on every [operational] cmrcl crew flight. As I said before, need one of each on ISS at all times.
On January 17, 2018, a scheduled correction of the ISS's orbit was carried out in accordance with the program of the International Space Station (ISS) mission. To perform the maneuver at 23:15 Moscow time, the engines of the service module (SM) Zvezda of the International Space Station were switched on. The operating time of the engines was 15.6 seconds. As a result, the station received a speed increment of 0.24 m / sec.According to the data of the ballistic-navigation support service of the Flight Control Center (MCC), the orbital parameters of the ISS after the maneuver were:• The minimum height above the Earth's surface is 402.8 km,• the maximum height above the Earth's surface is 422.7 km,• the circulation period is 92.60 minutes,• inclination of the orbit - 51.625 degrees.The purpose of the correction was the formation of ballistic conditions for launching the Progress-MS-08 cargo vehicle, scheduled for February 11, 2018, into orbit, as well as landing of the transport manned spacecraft Soyuz MS-06 scheduled for February 28, 2018.
Are there any information about a crew change on Soyuz MS-09?According to the pictures and the text in this pages http://www.gctc.ru/main.php?id=4060 and http://www.gctc.ru/main.php?id=4064 it looks like Serena Auñón-Chancellor is the third member of this crew instead of Jeanette Epps.
Yes Epps was replaced.
A pair of spacewalks are planned for Jan. 23 and 29 to swap and stow external robotics gear. NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei will lead both spacewalks. Flight Engineer Scott Tingle will join him on the first spacewalk with Japanese astronaut Norishige Kanai joining Vande Hei on the second.
Deployment Schedule, 1KUNS-PFJanuary 16, 2018: 1KUNS-PF handed over to JAXAAround March 2018: launch to the ISSSpring timeframe 2018: deployment from Kibo with a robotic arm
Serena Auñón-Chancellor, who previously was assigned to Expedition 58/59, has been reassigned to the Expedition 56/57 crew, launching in June. She is taking the place of astronaut Jeanette Epps, who will return to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to assume duties in the Astronaut Office and be considered for assignment to future missions. Anne McClain, a member of the 2013 astronaut class, will fly on the Expedition 58/59 crew, launching in November.
ISS Daily Summary Report – 1/17/2018 ISS Reboost: Today ground teams commanded an ISS reboost using the Service Module (SM) Main Engines. This maneuver, in combination with the next maneuver planned for GMT 30, will set up the proper conditions for the 69P 2-orbit rendezvous test on GMT 42 and 52S landing on GMT 59.
a second spacewalk to move a faulty grapple fixture inside for return to Earth, and to relocate another outside the station, has been deferred to mid February