SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft will lift off carrying a crew of four people to the International Space Station (ISS) on a six-month-long mission.

What is the Crew-1 Mission?

• The mission is part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, whose objective is to make access to space easier in terms of its cost.
• This will carry four astronauts on NASA missions, maintaining a space station crew of seven to maximize time dedicated to scientific research on the orbiting laboratory.
• With this, the cargo and crew can be easily transported to and from the ISS, enabling greater scientific research.
• At the ISS, the crew will join the members of Expedition 64, the space station crew currently in residence at the ISS.

Mission goals

• The goals of the mission are the same as that of Expedition 1 that lifted off 20 years ago.
• NASA has called both of these ISS missions “historic”.
• At the ISS, the Crew-1 team will join members of Expedition 64 and conduct microgravity studies and deliver new science hardware to ISS.
• Once in orbit, NASA astronauts will collect samples to provide data to scientists back on Earth so that they can continue to study how dietary changes affect his body.
• The crew will also study the effects of dietary improvements on immune function and the gut microbiome and how those improvements can help crews adapt to spaceflight.

The term micro-g environment is more or less synonymous with the terms weightlessness and zero-g, but with an emphasis on the fact that g-forces are never exactly zero—just very small.

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