The International Space Station is now in the waning days of Expedition 72 and is preparing to begin Expedition 73. The crew currently assigned to the U.S. Orbital Segment on the Station has completed its handover, with Crew-9 returning to Earth on March 18 and Crew-10 arriving just days earlier.
The Station is also being prepared for a crew handover in April on the Russian Segment and an imminent departure of a cargo ship. The visiting vehicle complement has changed several times since 2025 began, and more changes loom in April after a pair of upcoming launches.
Crew handovers
After the Boeing Crew Flight Test astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were incorporated into the Crew-9 mission following the departure of Starliner Calypso without them, they spent an extra six months aboard the Station to bring their time in space to nine months. Wilmore and Williams served a regular ISS rotation on Crew-9 along with mission commander Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.
Crew-9 astronauts (from left to right) Suni Williams, Aleksandr Gorbunov, Nick Hague, and Butch Wilmore aboard ISS. (Credit: NASA)
Crew-10, carrying four crew members aboard Crew Dragon Endurance, launched to the International Space Station (ISS) from the Kennedy Space Center on March 14 after a scrub on March 12 due to a ground support equipment issue. The crew, consisting of NASA’s Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers along with JAXA’s Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos’ Kirill Peskov, docked at the Harmony module’s forward port on the Station at 04:04 UTC on Sunday, March 16.
Crew handovers on the U.S. Orbital Segment (USOS) normally last for a few days as the departing crew assists the arriving crew with transitioning to Station activities and operations. The handover between Crew-9 and Crew-10 was shorter than usual as NASA moved up Crew-9’s return by a few days due to an unfavorable weather forecast for the end of the week. Another factor in the decision was to conserve consumables due to a potential delay in an upcoming Cygnus cargo flight.
The Crew-9 astronauts boarded Crew Dragon Freedom, docked to the zenith port on the Harmony node module, and closed the hatch between Freedom and the ISS at 03:05 UTC on Tuesday, March 18. Two hours later, at 05:05 UTC, Freedom undocked from Harmony and left the Station.
Crew-9 safely splashed down off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida, at 5:57 PM EDT (21:57 UTC) on March 18 and was recovered by SpaceX’s recovery ship Megan. All four astronauts were taken aboard the ship for post-flight medical examination before leaving the ship to return to Houston and Russia.
After Crew-9’s return to Earth, NASA revealed that the agency is looking into the possibility of a third uncrewed test flight for Boeing’s Starliner and wanted Starliner to be a “crew-capable” spacecraft.
The Crew-9, Crew-10, and Soyuz MS-26 crews just after Crew-10’s arrival at ISS. (Credit: NASA)
Now that the crew handover on the USOS is complete, the Station is back to its regular seven crew members. NASA’s Don Pettit, along with Roscosmos Soyuz MS-26 crew commander Aleksey Ovchinin and flight engineer Ivan Vagner, are spending their last few weeks aboard the Station before the Russian segment’s upcoming crew handover in April.
Soyuz MS-27 is scheduled to launch to the Station from Site 31/6 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Tuesday, April 8, at 05:47 UTC. Roscosmos crew commander Sergey Ryzhikov, flight engineer Alexey Zubritsky, and NASA’s Jonny Kim will be onboard. Ryzhikov will fly on his third flight while Zubritsky and Kim are making their first trip to space. The MS-27 crew will stay aboard the Station for around eight months.
The Soyuz MS-27 crew in front of the Soyuz MS-26 rocket in 2024. (Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)
The Soyuz spacecraft will dock to the Prichal module located at the end of the Nauka science module on the Russian segment, and the Soyuz MS-26 and MS-27 crews will conduct their handover activities to transition the new crew to Station activities. Soyuz MS-26 is scheduled to undock from the Station and return to Earth on April 20. After Soyuz MS-26’s undocking, Expedition 72 will end, and Expedition 73 will begin.
Suni Williams served as ISS commander from September 2024 until March 7, when she passed those duties to Aleksey Ovchinin during a change of command ceremony. Ovchinin will hand over command of the Station to Takuya Onishi on April 20, and Expedition 73 will begin with Onishi as the third Japanese astronaut to command the ISS.
Upcoming cargo missions
The first ISS cargo flight of 2025 launched on Feb. 27 at 21:24 UTC, when Progress MS-30 lifted off from Site 31/6 in Baikonur. The Progress cargo vehicle brought around 2,599 kg of food, fuel, and supplies to the Station, docking at the Zvezda module’s aft port. Progress MS-30 joins Progress MS-29, docked at the Poisk module, and Soyuz MS-26, docked to the Rassvet module, as the visiting vehicles on the Russian segment.
Progress MS-28 seen after undocking from the Zvezda module on Feb. 25. (Credit: NASA)
Before Progress MS-30’s arrival, Progress MS-28 was loaded with trash before undocking on Feb. 25. The MS-28 spacecraft performed a destructive re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, and its departure cleared the way for MS-30 to dock at the aft end of Zvezda.
Progress MS-30 performed an ISS orbit correction on Monday, March 17, to prepare for Soyuz MS-27’s arrival and the departure of Soyuz MS-26. Progress ships docked to the Zvezda aft module are used for periodic reboosts, and Cygnus and Cargo Dragon spacecraft can now also perform reboost maneuvers to prevent the Station’s orbit from decaying due to small amounts of atmospheric drag.
ISS visiting vehicles as of March 18, 2025. (Credit: NASA)
The NG-21 Cygnus S.S. Francis R. “Dick” Scobee remains berthed to the Unity module’s nadir Common Berthing Mechanism on the USOS. However, its time in orbit is coming to a close, and it will be loaded with trash before being unberthed from the Station by the Canadarm2 on Friday, March 21, at 11:35 UTC. Cygnus will perform a destructive re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere afterward.
The next Cygnus launch, NG-22, is scheduled for launch no earlier than June. However, there are some questions about when the launch might occur due to damage sustained by the shipping container. The pressurized cargo module of the Cygnus was encased within the container when transported to the launch site in Florida. The cargo module is now being inspected. This is the second delay for NG-22, as it was delayed from February due to an avionics issue.
Due to questions surrounding NG-22’s readiness for launch, some experiments have been removed from the next cargo ship to fly to ISS in favor of additional consumables, including food and other essentials. CRS-32 is scheduled to fly aboard a SpaceX Cargo Dragon from the Kennedy Space Center on April 21 at 4:00 AM EDT.
ISS activities
After January’s spacewalk activities, the Station crew has been busy with its usual experiments and maintenance duties. In February, a navigation experiment known as the Navigation and Communication Testbed (NAVCOM) was installed in the European Space Agency’s Columbus laboratory module.
It is hoped that NAVCOM will be a more accurate alternative to the Global Navigation Satellite System constellations and transmit precise navigation data across the Earth-Moon system.
Nick Hague processing samples of micro-algae as part of an experiment to produce fresh food on long spaceflights. (Credit: NASA)
Another highlight of the science performed during the latter part of Expedition 72 is the BioFabrication Facility (BFF), also in the Columbus module. The BFF is a 3D bioprinter being tested for its ability to print biological tissues in space, and 3D bioprinting could eventually be used to print entire biological organs.
A full range of biological, biomedical, materials science, agricultural, robotics, and technology experiments have been worked on during Expedition 72, and this work will continue during Expedition 73. Samples from these experiments are periodically sent back to Earth aboard spacecraft like Cargo Dragon.
No spacewalks are currently scheduled for either the USOS or Russian segment. However, a future EVA on the USOS is expected to prepare the Station’s truss for the installation of additional iROSA solar panels to augment the ISS’s power production capabilities. Maintenance work on spacesuits was conducted in February in preparation for a spacewalk sometime in the spring.
(Lead image: Image of Crew Dragon Freedom, the USOS, and Suni Williams on a spacewalk. Credit: NASA)
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