NASA and SpaceX once again are gearing up to launch astronauts on an American rocket, and spacecraft from American soil to the International Space Station, as part of NASA's commercial crew program. NASA's SpaceX Crew-3 is the third crew rotation mission that will carry an international crew of four astronauts on an expedition to the microgravity laboratory. Let's discuss the mission in detail. Last year, NASA and the European Space Agency selected four astronauts to serve as crew members for NASA's SpaceX Crew-3 mission. The crew consists of NASA astronauts Roger Chari and Tom Marshburn, who will serve as commander and pilot respectively, and ESA astronaut Matthias Morer and NASA astronaut Kaleb Barron, who will serve as mission specialists. This will be the first space flight for Roger Chari, who became an NASA astronaut in 2017. He is a colonel in the U.S. Air Force, and joins the mission with extensive experience as a test pilot. Also, Chari is a member of the Artemis Team eligible for assignment to a future lunar mission. Tom Marshburn is a North Carolina native who became an astronaut in 2004. Prior to serving as an astronaut, the medical doctor served as a flight surgeon at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, and later became medical operations lead for the International Space Station. The crew-3 mission will be his third visit to the space station, and his second-long duration mission. Marshburn previously served as a crew member of STS-127 in 2009, an expedition 3435, which concluded in 2013. Matthias Morer, like Chari, will be making his first trip to space with the crew-3 mission. Before becoming an astronaut, Morer held a number of engineering and research roles, both in a university setting and at ESA. Kaleb Barron is a mission specialist for crew-3, and will work closely with the commander, and pilot to monitor the spacecraft during the dynamic launch and re-entry phases of flight. Once aboard the station, she will become a flight engineer for Expedition 66. Also selected as one of NASA's Artemis astronauts, Barron could join Chari as one of the two astronauts that could walk on the lunar surface one day. Crew-3 will be Barron's first space flight. Crew-3 will be launched aboard a brand new Dragon spacecraft, giving SpaceX a fleet of three operational crew capsules. SpaceX is currently developing a fourth crew Dragon spacecraft, which will make its debut on NASA's Crew-4 mission next year. Following in the footsteps of the astronauts who flew on the first missions of SpaceX's Crew Dragon Endeavor and Crew Dragon Resilience Capsules, Chari and his crewmates chose the name endurance for the new spaceship. The crews come up with the name of the vehicle which is endurance. The new spacecraft is almost identical to the previous spacecrafts, however, the Crew-3 mission will be the first time SpaceX has reused a Crew Dragon nose cone from a prior flight. There are also software upgrades to guard against radiation impacts on communications systems, while the spacecraft is docked at the space station. SpaceX also added more cleaning techniques to cut down on foreign object debris and introduced computer changes to improve their performance during reentry. Engineers also tweaked the spacecraft's docking procedures and mechanisms to reduce hardware interference on the station's side of the interface. After a glitch with the waste management system on the Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft flown on the inspiration for mission last month, SpaceX created and applied a fast fix to the Dragon Toilet on the new capsule. After months of training at NASA facilities and a 10-day official quarantine period, the crew arrived at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on October 26 to undergo final preparations before launch. Lifting off from launch pad 39A on a Falcon 9 rocket on October 31, Crew Dragon will accelerate its four passengers to approximately 28,000 km per hour and put it on an intercept course with the International Space Station. The Falcon 9 first stayed used to launch this mission, booster B1067, flew previously on SpaceX's 22nd commercial resupply mission to the station in June 2021. Once an orbit, the Crew and SpaceX mission control will monitor a series of automatic maneuvers that will guide the Crew 3 astronauts to their new home in orbit, at the forward end of the station's Harmony Module. After a 22-hour journey, Crew Dragon will be in position to rendezvous and dock with the space station on November 1. The spacecraft is designed to dock autonomously, with the ability for astronauts aboard the spacecraft to take control and pilot manually, if necessary. After successfully docking, the astronauts of Crew 3 will be welcomed to the station by the Expedition 66 crew, including the Crew 2 astronauts still aboard. The Crew 3 astronauts will spend approximately six months aboard the International Space Station conducting new and exciting scientific research in areas such as material science, health technologies, and plant science to prepare for human exploration beyond low Earth orbit and benefit life on Earth. During their stay aboard the orbiting laboratory, astronauts of Crew 3 will see cargo spacecraft including the SpaceX cargo Dragon in December and the Northrop Grumman's signal in early 2022. They will also welcome two different private crews to the station, including Japanese tourists aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft at the end of 2021 and the Axiom Mission 1 crew, the first private astronaut mission to the International Space Station, scheduled to launch no earlier than 21st February 2022. The Crew 3 astronauts are scheduled to conduct a series of spacewalks to outfit the station's power system in preparation for new solar arrays that will increase the station's total available power supply. At the conclusion of the mission, Crew Dragon will autonomously dock with the four astronauts aboard, depart the space station, and re-enter Earth's atmosphere. After splash down just off-floor it as coast, a SpaceX recovery vessel will pick up the crew and bring them back to shore to board a plane for the return to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. So, let's look forward to the launch of this exciting mission to the space station. In the meantime, don't forget to subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications to receive the latest space-related videos. And as always, thanks for watching!