On March 18, the crew welcomed cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Sergey Korsakov, and Denis Matveev, when they docked in their Soyuz MS-21 team ship nearly three-and-a-half hours after releasing from Kazakhstan. Expedition 66 ended on March 30 when the Soyuz MS-19 crew ship undocked returning NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov back to Earth just 4 hours later.
In the station Russian section on Friday, April 1, Artemyev and Matveev set up the Poisk modules airlock for future spacewalk work prepared for the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module. Korsakov operated in Zvezda service module performing preventative maintenance on the ventilation system. The cosmonauts also continued getting acquainted with spaceport station systems 2 weeks into their six-and-a-half-month mission.
Astronaut Matthias Maurer is pictured during a spacewalk on March 23, to install thermal gear and electronic devices parts on the orbiting laboratory. Credit: NASA
Four Expedition 67 astronauts, who have been aboard the International Space Station because November, kicked off the weekend with a light responsibility day Friday following a set of spacewalks and a crew swap in March. The orbiting labs newest crewmates, 3 Flight Engineers from Roscosmos, stayed hectic with their science and maintenance tasks.
March was a hectic month in space that saw 2 spacewalks, the arrival of 3 brand-new cosmonauts, and finally the departure of 3 crewmates formally ending Expedition 66. 3 NASA astronauts and one ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut took a well-deserved break on Friday following the intense duration aboard the orbiting lab.
NASA Flight Engineers Kayla Barron and Raja Chari carried out the very first spacewalk on March 15. Chari then signed up with ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer on March 23 for another spacewalk. The spacewalks were committed to preparing the space station for its third roll-out solar range and setting up electronics and communications equipment.