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By NASA
The four crew members of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 mission to the International Space Station train inside a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft in Hawthorne, California. From left to right: Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, NASA astronauts Mike Fincke and Zena Cardman, and JAXA astronaut Kimiya YuiSpaceX Four crew members are preparing to launch to the International Space Station as part of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 mission to perform research, technology demonstrations, and maintenance activities aboard the orbiting laboratory.
During the mission, Crew-11 also will contribute to NASA’s Artemis campaign by simulating Moon landing scenarios that astronauts may encounter near the lunar South Pole, showing how the space station helps prepare crews for deep space human exploration. The simulations will be performed before, during, and after their mission using handheld controllers and multiple screens to identify how changes in gravity affect spatial awareness and astronauts’ ability to pilot spacecraft, like a lunar lander.
NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov will lift off no earlier than 12:09 p.m. EDT on Thursday, July 31, from Launch Complex 39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a long-duration mission. The cadre will fly aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, named Endeavour, which previously flew NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2, Crew-2, Crew-6, and Crew-8 missions, as well as private astronaut mission Axiom Mission 1.
The flight is the 11th crew rotation mission with SpaceX to the space station as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. Overall, the Crew-11 mission is the 16th crewed Dragon flight to the space station, including Demo-2 in 2020 and 11 operational crew rotations for NASA, as well as four private astronaut missions.
As support teams progress through Dragon preflight milestones for Crew-11, they also are preparing a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket booster for its third flight. Once all rocket and spacecraft system checkouts are complete and all components are certified for flight, teams will mate Dragon to Falcon 9 in SpaceX’s hangar at the launch site. The integrated spacecraft and rocket will then be rolled to the pad and raised vertically for the crew’s dry dress rehearsal and an integrated static fire test before launch.
Meet Crew-11
The official crew portrait of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 members. Front row, from left, are Pilot Mike Fincke and Commander Zena Cardman, both NASA astronauts. In the back from left, are Mission Specialists Oleg Platonov of Roscosmos and Kimiya Yui of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency)NASA/Robert Markowitz Selected as a NASA astronaut in 2017, Cardman will conduct her first spaceflight. The Williamsburg, Virginia, native holds a bachelor’s degree in biology and a master’s degree in marine sciences from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At the time of selection, she was pursuing a doctorate in geosciences. Cardman’s geobiology and geochemical cycling research focused on subsurface environments, from caves to deep sea sediments. Since completing initial training, Cardman has supported real-time station operations and lunar surface exploration planning. Follow @zenanaut on X and @zenanaut on Instagram.
This mission will be Fincke’s fourth trip to the space station, having logged 382 days in space and nine spacewalks during Expedition 9 in 2004, Expedition 18 in 2008, and STS-134 in 2011, the final flight of space shuttle Endeavour. Throughout the past decade, Fincke has applied his expertise to NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, advancing the development and testing of Dragon and Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft toward operational certification. The Emsworth, Pennsylvania, native is a graduate of the United States Air Force Test Pilot School and holds bachelors’ degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, in both aeronautics and astronautics, as well as Earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences. He also has a master’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University in California. Fincke is a retired U.S. Air Force colonel with more than 2,000 flight hours in over 30 different aircraft. Follow @AstroIronMike on X and Instagram.
With 142 days in space, this mission will be Yui’s second trip to the space station. After his selection as a JAXA astronaut in 2009, Yui flew as a flight engineer for Expedition 44/45 and became the first Japanese astronaut to capture JAXA’s H-II Transfer Vehicle using the station’s robotic arm. In addition to constructing a new experimental environment aboard Kibo, he conducted a total of 21 experiments for JAXA. In November 2016, Yui was assigned as chief of the JAXA Astronaut Group. He graduated from the School of Science and Engineering at the National Defense Academy of Japan in 1992. He later joined the Air Self-Defense Force at the Japan Defense Agency (currently the Ministry of Defense). In 2008, Yui joined the Air Staff Office at the Ministry of Defense as a lieutenant colonel. Follow @astro_kimiya on X.
The mission will be Platonov’s first spaceflight. Before his selection as a cosmonaut in 2018, Platonov earned a degree in engineering from Krasnodar Air Force Academy in aircraft operations and air traffic management. He also earned a bachelor’s degree in state and municipal management in 2016 from the Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok, Russia. Assigned as a test cosmonaut in 2021, he has experience in piloting aircraft, zero gravity training, scuba diving, and wilderness survival.
Mission Overview
From left to right: Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, NASA astronauts Mike Fincke and Zena Cardman, and JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui pictured after participating in a training simulation inside a mockup at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in HoustonNASA/Robert Markowitz Following liftoff, Falcon 9 will accelerate Dragon to approximately 17,500 mph. Once in orbit, the crew, NASA, and SpaceX mission control will monitor a series of maneuvers that will guide Dragon to the forward-facing port of the station’s Harmony module. The spacecraft is designed to dock autonomously, but the crew can pilot it manually, if necessary.
After docking, Crew-11 will be welcomed aboard the station by the seven-member Expedition 73 crew, before conducting a short handover period on research and maintenance activities with the departing Crew-10 crew members. Then, NASA astronauts Anne McClain, Nichole Ayers, JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov will undock from the space station and return to Earth. Ahead of Crew-10’s return, mission teams will review weather conditions at the splashdown sites off the coast of California before departure from the station.
Cardman, Fincke, and Yui will conduct scientific research to prepare for human exploration beyond low Earth orbit and benefit humanity on Earth. Participating crew members will simulate lunar landings, test strategies to safeguard vision, and advance other human spaceflight studies led by NASA’s Human Research Program. The crew also will study plant cell division and microgravity’s effects on bacteria-killing viruses, as well as perform experiments to produce a higher volume of human stem cells and generate on-demand nutrients.
While aboard the orbiting laboratory, Crew-11 will welcome a Soyuz spacecraft in November with three new crew members, including NASA astronaut Chris Williams. They also will bid farewell to the Soyuz carrying NASA astronaut Jonny Kim. The crew also is expected to see the arrival of the Dragon, Roscosmos Progress spacecraft, and Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft to resupply the station.
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 mission will be aboard the International Space Station on Nov. 2, when the orbiting laboratory surpasses 25 years of a continuous human presence. Since the first crew expedition arrived, the space station has enabled more than 4,000 groundbreaking experiments in the unique microgravity environment, while becoming a springboard for building a low Earth orbit economy and preparing for NASA’s future exploration of the Moon and Mars.
Learn more about the space station, its research, and crew, at:
https://www.nasa.gov/station
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By NASA
NASA/Jonny Kim In this June 13, 2025, photo, NASA astronaut Anne McClain shows off a hamburger-shaped cake to celebrate 200 cumulative days in space for JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi since his first spaceflight as an Expedition 48-49 Flight Engineer in 2016.
Onishi and McClain launched to the International Space Station along with NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov on March 14, 2025, as part of the Crew-10 mission. Aboard the orbital laboratory, the Crew-10 members conduct scientific research to prepare for human exploration beyond low Earth orbit and benefit humanity on Earth. McClain and Ayers also performed a spacewalk on May 1, 2025 – McClain’s third and Ayers’ first.
Check out the International Space Station blog to follow the crew’s research and other activities.
Image credit: NASA/Jonny Kim
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By NASA
A collaboration between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation, NISAR will use synthetic aperture radar to monitor nearly all the planet’s land- and ice-covered surfaces twice every 12 days.Credit: NASA NASA will host a news conference at 12 p.m. EDT Monday, July 21, to discuss the upcoming NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) mission.
The Earth-observing satellite, a first-of-its-kind collaboration between NASA and ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation), carries an advanced radar system that will help protect communities by providing a dynamic, three-dimensional view of Earth in unprecedented detail and detecting the movement of land and ice surfaces down to the centimeter.
The NISAR mission will lift off from ISRO’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, on India’s southeastern coast. Launch is targeted for no earlier than late July.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California will stream the briefing live on its X, Facebook, and YouTube channels. Learn how to watch NASA content through a variety of platforms, including social media.
Participants in the news conference include:
Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters Karen St. Germain, director, Earth Science Division, NASA Headquarters Wendy Edelstein, deputy project manager, NISAR, NASA JPL Paul Rosen, project scientist, NISAR, NASA JPL To ask questions by phone, members of the media must RSVP no later than two hours before the start of the event to: rexana.v.vizza@jpl.nasa.gov. NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online. Questions can be asked on social media during the briefing using #AskNISAR.
With its two radar instruments — an S-band system provided by ISRO and an L-band system provided by NASA — NISAR will use a technique known as synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to scan nearly all the planet’s land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days. Each system’s signal is sensitive to different sizes of features on Earth’s surface, and each specializes in measuring different attributes, such as moisture content, surface roughness, and motion.
These capabilities will help scientists better understand processes involved in natural hazards and catastrophic events, such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, land subsidence, and landslides.
Additionally, NISAR’s cloud penetrating ability will aid urgent responses to communities during weather disasters such as hurricanes, storm surge, and flooding. The detailed maps the mission creates also will provide information on both gradual and sudden changes occurring on Earth’s land and ice surfaces.
Managed by Caltech for NASA, JPL leads the U.S. component of the NISAR project and provided the L-band SAR. NASA JPL also provided the radar reflector antenna, the deployable boom, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder, and payload data subsystem. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the Near Space Network, which will receive NISAR’s L-band data.
Multiple ISRO centers have contributed to NISAR. The Space Applications Centre is providing the mission’s S-band SAR. The U R Rao Satellite Centre provided the spacecraft bus. The rocket is from Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, launch services are through Satish Dhawan Space Centre, and satellite mission operations are by the ISRO Telemetry Tracking and Command Network. The National Remote Sensing Centre is responsible for S-band data reception, operational products generation, and dissemination.
To learn more about NISAR, visit:
https://nisar.jpl.nasa.gov
-end-
Karen Fox / Elizabeth Vlock
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / elizabeth.a.vlock@nasa.gov
Andrew Wang / Scott Hulme
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-379-6874 / 818-653-9131
andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov / scott.d.hulme@jpl.nasa.gov
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Last Updated Jul 16, 2025 EditorJessica TaveauLocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) Earth Science Division Goddard Space Flight Center Jet Propulsion Laboratory Near Space Network Science Mission Directorate View the full article
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By European Space Agency
Video: 00:00:40 View of Earth as seen by ESA project astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski inside the seven-windowed cupola, the International Space Station's "window to the world".
The European Space Agency-built Cupola is the favourite place of many astronauts on the International Space Station. It serves not only as a unique photo spot, but also for observing robotic activities of the Canadian Space Agency's robotic arm Canadarm2, arriving spacecraft and spacewalks.
Sławosz was launched to the International Space Station on the Dragon spacecraft as part of Axiom Mission 4 on 25 June 2025. The 20-day mission on board is known as Ignis.
During the Ignis mission, Sławosz conducted 13 experiments proposed by Polish companies and institutions and developed in collaboration with ESA, along with three additional ESA-led experiments. These covered a broad range of areas including human research, materials science, biology, biotechnology and technology demonstrations.
The Ax-4 mission marks the second commercial human spaceflight for an ESA project astronaut. Ignis was sponsored by the Polish government and supported by ESA, the Polish Ministry of Economic Development and Technology (MRiT) and the Polish Space Agency (POLSA).
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By NASA
Explore This Section Science Uncategorized NASA SCoPE Summer Symposium… Overview Learning Resources Science Activation Teams SME Map Opportunities More Science Activation Stories Citizen Science 4 min read
NASA SCoPE Summer Symposium Celebrates Early Career Scientists and Cross-Team Collaboration
From June 16–18, 2025, the NASA Science Mission Directorate Community of Practice for Education (SCoPE) Summer Symposium brought together a community of scientists, educators, and outreach professionals to celebrate and strengthen NASA’s commitment to developing its workforce and broadening participation in science.
NASA SCoPE is a NASA-funded initiative at Arizona State University that connects early career scientists with NASA Science Activation (SciAct) program teams to build capacity in science communication, community engagement, and educational outreach. Through targeted support like Seed Grants, Travel Grants, and Mission Liaison opportunities, SCoPE equips scientists with the skills and networks needed to meaningfully engage the public with NASA science.
Held in collaboration with key SciAct teams—including Infiniscope, Co-creating with Communities, NASA’s Community College Network, and NASA’s Universe of Learning—the 2025 symposium highlighted the incredible impact of SCoPE over the past four and a half years. The program has financially supported more than 100 early career scientists across a growing network of nearly 1,000 participants.
Over the course of the three-day event, 23 awardees of SCoPE Seed Grants, Travel Grants, and Mission Liaison Grants came together to share their work, connect across disciplines, and explore new avenues for collaboration. Twelve Seed Grant awardees presented their projects, illustrating the transformative power of partnerships with SciAct teams. Highlights included learning how to write for young audiences through mentorship from NASA eClips in support of the children’s book ‘Blai and Zorg Explore the Moon’, designed for elementary learners; a collaborative effort between ‘Lost City, Icy Worlds’ and OpenSpace that evolved into long-term networking and visualization opportunities; and an Antarctic research project that, through collaboration with the Ocean Community Engagement and Awareness using NASA Earth Observations and Science (OCEANOS) project and Infiniscope, both expanded training opportunities for expedition guides and brought polar science to Puerto Rican high school summer interns.
Beyond formal sessions, the symposium embraced community building through shared meals, informal networking, and hands-on experiences like a 3D planetarium show using OpenSpace software, a telescope demonstration with 30 high school students, and a screening of NASA’s Planetary Defenders documentary. Workshop topics addressed the real-world needs of early career professionals, including grant writing, logic model development, and communicating with the media.
Survey responses revealed that 95% of attendees left with a stronger sense of belonging to a community of scientists engaged in outreach. Participants reported making valuable new connections—with peers, mentors, and potential collaborators—and left inspired to try new approaches in their own work, from social media storytelling to designing outreach for hospital patients or other specialized audiences.
As one participant put it, “Seeing others so passionate about Science Communication inspired me to continue doing it in different ways… it feels like the start of a new wave.” Another attendee remarked, “I want to thank the entire team for SCoPE to even exist. It is an incredible team/program/resource and I can’t even imagine the amount of work, dedication and pure passion that has gone into this entire project over the years. Although I only found SCoPE very recently, I feel like it has been incredibly helpful in my scientific journey and I only wish I had learned of the program sooner. Thank you to the entire team for what was a truly educational and inspirational workshop, and the wonderful community that SCoPE has fostered.”
This successful event was made possible through the dedication of NASA SciAct collaborators and the leadership of SciAct Program Manager Lin Chambers, whose continued support of early career engagement through SCoPE has created a growing, connected community of science communicators. The SCoPE Summer Symposium exemplifies how cross-team collaboration and community-centered design can effectively amplify the reach of NASA science.
Learn more about how NASA’s Science Activation program connects NASA science experts, real content, and experiences with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond: https://science.nasa.gov/learn/about-science-activation/
SCoPE-funded scientists and collaborators gather at the 2025 SCoPE Summer Symposium to celebrate program success, share ideas, build partnerships, and advance science communication and education efforts across NASA’s Science Activation program. Share
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Last Updated Jul 15, 2025 Editor NASA Science Editorial Team Related Terms
Opportunities For Educators to Get Involved Science Activation Science Mission Directorate Explore More
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