"international-space-station"

It will be the first mission to fly two international partner crew members as part of the agency's Commercial Crew Programme, NASA said in a blog post.

"Dragon will fire its thrusters to move a safe distance from the space station during the next 36 hours. Dragon will conduct a deorbit burn at 7:37 p.m. EST to begin its re-entry sequence into Earth's atmosphere," NASA said

Chari, 43, will serve as the commander while Nasa's Tom Marshburn will be pilot and ESA's Matthias Maurer will serve as a mission specialist for the mission, which is expected to be launched next year

The tests mark an end to a reliability campaign that will help strengthen the spacecraft's landing system, NASA said on Tuesday.

"The main task of the exit was to prepare the station for the arrival of the Nauka module: for this, the cosmonauts switched the Transit-B antenna of the telemetry system from the Pirs module to Poisk," Russian space agency Roscosmos

The crew is comprised of three Americans -- Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker -- and Japan's Soichi Noguchi.

The spacecraft carrying NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker, along with Soichi Noguchi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency has safely reached orbit, NASA said.

Crew Dragon is targeting launch on a Falcon 9 on Saturday at 7.49 p.m. EST from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

A Russia Soyuz rocket launched the Expedition One crew on October 31, 2000, and docked with the space station two days later.

The requirement of replacing the engines became apparent after an investigation into the aberrant behaviour of the Falcon 9 rocket observed during a recent non-NASA mission launch attempt, Space.com reported on Wednesday.

The project under Google Arts & Culture includes NASA collections, stories and some new games to help anybody learn more and engage in this important milestone in space exploration.

The crew landed just south of the town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at 8.54 am Kazakhstan time, NASA said.

Originally scheduled for October 31st, the planned six-month mission was delayed as Elon Musk-run SpaceX evaluates off-nominal behaviour of Falcon 9 first stage engine gas generators observed during a recent non-NASA mission launch attempt.

As Ferguson withdrew for "personal reason", veteran NASA astronaut Barry "Butch" Wilmore will join astronauts Mike Fincke and Nicole Mann for the Boeing crew flight test, the US space agency said on Wednesday.

At 5.32 a.m. EDT (3 p.m. India time), Expedition 63 Commander Chris Cassidy of NASA used the robotic Canadarm2 to grapple the Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft as Ivan Vagner of Roscosmos monitored Cygnus systems during its approach.

Its features improve on current space toilet operations and help NASA prepare for future missions, including those to the Moon and Mars.