American astronauts Chell Lindgren and Bob Hines will fly to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2022 as part of the crew of the private spacecraft Crew Dragon. This was reported on Friday, February 12, by NASA.
Lindgren and Hynes will become the captain and pilot of SpaceX’s fourth operational mission. The full composition of the crew will be known later, while the selection of candidates is still available, the space agency noted.
Hynes, selected as an astronaut only in 2017, will go into orbit for the first time, and for Lindgren it will be the second flight into space.
In December 2020, the American Space Agency announced the selection of three astronauts for the third regular flight to the ISS of the newest spacecraft Crew Dragon, it will include two Americans – Raja Chari and Tom Marshburn, as well as an astronaut from Germany Matthias Maurer. The name of the fourth crew member has not yet been determined. The mission is scheduled for fall 2021.
On February 7, the Crew Dragon spacecraft on the ISS broke the American record for the duration of a manned spacecraft flight, which had been held for almost half a century. Previously, the 84-day record was held by the Skylab 4 team, which was set on February 8, 1974. It belonged to the Apollo ship crewed by Gerald Carr, Edward Gibson, and William Pogue.
In November 2020, Crew Dragon delivered a crew of Americans Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, as well as Japanese Soichi Noguchi to the ISS. They will return to Earth in the spring, so the Crew Dragon’s flight duration will be 160-170 days.