SpaceX Crew-3

Crew Dragon capsules have been given names by their initial crews — Endeavour for the first, and Resilience for the second. On 7 October 2021, it was announced that the third capsule will be called Endurance.[7] The name honors the SpaceX and NASA teams that endured through a pandemic, building the spacecraft and training the astronauts who flew it.[8] The name also honors Endurance, the ship used by Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. The three-masted vessel sank in 1915 after being bound in ice before reaching Antarctica.[9]

German ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer was selected first for the mission in September 2020.[10][11][12] NASA astronauts Raja Chari and Thomas Marshburn were added on 14 December 2020 to the crew.[13][14] The fourth seat was left open in anticipation that a Russian cosmonaut would take the seat, marking the beginning of a barter agreement that would see NASA and Roscosmos trade seats on the Soyuz and Commercial Crew Vehicles, although in April 2021 then-acting NASA administration Steve Jurczyk said that this agreement would be unlikely to start until after Crew-3 had launched.[15] The fourth seat was assigned to Kayla Barron in May 2021.[16]

Chari is the first rookie astronaut to command a NASA space mission since the Skylab 4 crew blasted off to the Skylab space station in 1973. Gerald Carr, who had not flown in space before, led a three-man crew on an 84-day flight on the Skylab.[17] This was also the first spaceflight for Maurer and Barron.[18]

Prime crew

Position	Astronaut
Spacecraft commander	Raja Chari, NASA Expedition 66 / 67 First spaceflight
Pilot	Thomas Marshburn, NASA Expedition 66 / 67 Third and last spaceflight
Mission specialist 1 [19]	Matthias Maurer, ESA Expedition 66 / 67 First spaceflight
Mission specialist 2 [19]	Kayla Barron, NASA Expedition 66 / 67 First spaceflight
References:[19][20][11][13][14][16]

Backup crew

Position	Astronaut
Spacecraft commander	Kjell N. Lindgren, NASA
Pilot	Robert Hines, NASA
Mission specialist 1	Samantha Cristoforetti, ESA
Mission specialist 2	Stephanie Wilson, NASA
References:[21][22][23]

The first astronauts of this NASA Astronaut Group 22 (nicknamed The Turtles) to fly to space, Raja Chari and Kayla Barron on SpaceX Crew-3 took a stuffed turtle as zero-g indicator, to pay a tribute to their astronaut group.[24] Additionally, to include the other crew members on board, Matthias Maurer and Tom Marshburn, the turtle was named "Pfau", a German word meaning "Peacock" for Matthias Maurer who is German, and for Tom Marshburn who was part of NASA Astronaut Group 19 (nicknamed The Peacocks).[25]

The third SpaceX operational mission in the Commercial Crew Program was originally scheduled to launch on 31 October 2021.[26] However, it was delayed to 3 November 2021 due to unfavorable weather in the Atlantic Ocean,[27] and then further delayed to 7 November 2021 due to a minor medical issue with one of the astronauts.[28] Due to expected bad weather, it was again delayed to 9 November 2021.[29]

Due to the launch delays, NASA decided to return the astronauts from Crew-2 before Crew-3 launched, thus being the first Crew Dragon indirect handover of space station crews.[30] SpaceX Crew-2 departed the station on 8 November 2021 and splashed down on 9 November 2021. SpaceX Crew-3 mission launched from Cape Canaveral on 11 November 2021 at 02:03:31 UTC.[31]

The return of Crew-3 was delayed multiple times, from April 2022 to early May. Undocking happened on 5 May (05:20 UTC), with splashdown occurring the following day after spending 176 days in space.[32]

The European segment of the mission is called "Cosmic Kiss".[33]

• Dragon C206 Endeavour
• Dragon C207 Resilience
• Dragon C210 Endurance
• Dragon C212 Freedom