the first time that a commercially built crew capsule launched from American soil

this is exciting all on its own but this upcoming Soyuz launch could also mark

the end of an era and what could be the last time Americans are sent to space in

a country other than their own expedition 5960 is expected to launch on

march 14th from the balcony or cosmodrome in kazakhstan ferrying the

new crew to the ISS including astronauts from October's failed abort mission the

two astronauts in one cosmonaut will be joining the crew already aboard the ISS

working on roughly 250 experiments to further our understanding of the human

body test new technology and even try to further wrap our brains around what time

means in space this latest mission will be on a Soyuz ms 12 spacecraft carrying

a three-person crew alexey ovchinin of the russian space agency Roscosmos NASA

astronauts Christina hammock coke and Nick Hague 4ov Keenan and Hague this is

their second attempt to make it to the ISS on October 11th 2018 the pair were

headed for a routine trip to the space station on a Soyuz rocket but two

minutes after liftoff a problem occurred during the separation of one of the

Rockets strap-on boosters forcing them to perform an emergency landing via

ballistic re-entry which sounds scary and is scary but it's actually the only

way astronauts used to re-enter at the beginnings of human space travel

since then ovchinin and Hague have been retrained and are prepared for

expedition 59 60 we got in touch with Hague currently stationed in Star City

Russia and spoke to him about his feelings of

heading back after only a few months well you know if you asked me a year ago

if I'd be in this position I could have never imagined it so it's a little bit

surreal being able to have another opportunity this quickly but I feel very

fortunate for the opportunity to be able to get up there and you know finally get

to doing the mission that I've been training for at NASA for the last five

years expedition 5960 will be making history

as they will be on board when the first Commercial Crew vehicles are scheduled

to arrive at the ISS having launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida do you

hasn't launched astronauts into space from its own soil since 2011

since then astronauts have been ferried to and from Earth via Russian Soyuz

rockets but this agreement is due to run out by the end of 2019 now there's a

chance that they may have the opportunity to buy more seats but the

overall goal is to get back to launching from the US so why did the u.s. stop

ferrying its astronauts to space officially named the space

transportation system NASA's Space Shuttle program had its first flight on

April 12th 1981 the space shuttle program was the world's first reusable

rocket shuttling astronauts repairing satellites and even helping to build the

ISS during its reign the program had five space shuttles that flew a total of

135 missions but by 2011 one estimate put the average cost per trip to roughly

1.5 billion dollars so after 30 years of service NASA decided to retire the

program since then the US has been entirely dependent on Russia as the

Soyuz is the only spacecraft available to transport crews to the ISS and

they're pretty reliable the Soyuz is the longest operational manned spacecraft in

history although it's expensive the u.s. currently pays 81 million dollars per

seat for its astronauts two hits arrive which is why in 2014 NASA decided to

spend its coin in the private sector awarding both SpaceX and Boeing with

contracts to build spacecraft that could shuttle astronauts in the long term this

also means that NASA has more resources available to tackle challenges like deep

space exploration and getting to Mars to be ready for the task

SpaceX built its crew Dragon spacecraft that sits atop a falcon 9 its first test

flight dubbed demonstration 1 launched on March 2nd from Kennedy Space Center

making history as the first commercially made American spacecraft and rocket to

launch from the US after a day in Earth's orbit the capsule successfully

docked into the ISS delivering its spacesuit sensor wearing test device

named Ripley and roughly 180 kilograms of supplies

it remained docked for roughly five days before making its descent back to earth

splashing down into the Atlantic Ocean the other contract was awarded to Boeing

who cst-100 our liner capsule is scheduled for its

uncrewed test launch in April 2019 star liner is designed to be reused at least

ten times within the span of six months SpaceX and Boeing are continuing tests

but both have committed to manned space missions for later this year nASA has

already assigned the crew that will be heading up on these historic flights and

although crew dragon and star liner are built to carry seven passengers for

these first operational missions they'll carry only four crew members along with

roughly 100 kilograms of cargo by having different launch capabilities it

provides more launch options when needing to replan an aborted launch like

what happened to option and and Hague back in October this is going to make

the the program much more robust by having multiple means to launch from

whether it's the US whether it's Boeing or whether it's space X or or whether

it's on a Soyuz we've got all these ways to deliver crews so that if we do have a

problem we're more resilient and we don't have to bring down the size of the

crew of the station and put a you know a damper on the the research and we can

continue to move forward at the pace that we want to because at the end of

the day it's also about the really cool science happening on board the ISS right

now there are roughly 250 scientific experiments stationed aboard send up on

previous missions from different space agency partners looking to study various

aspects of life in space these experiments include how to grow food and

microgravity or monitoring lightning from space that happens every second or

how astronauts experience bone density loss during expeditions before heading

up the astronauts get training so they're able to handle the experiments

and they can even volunteer for them like the airway monitoring program sent

up by European Space Agency to help study astronauts loan function on the

ISS the study looks at the nitric oxide the astronauts breathe out which helps

in understanding the conditions of our lungs in space monitoring nitric oxide

levels helps to detect inflammatory diseases in the lungs like asthma

previous crews of astronauts have volunteered for the experiment like

German ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst and we also found that spaceflight triggers

a little bit the reaction of the lungs that are very close to what people have

when they have asthma so we can still breathe freely in space

it's not really stopping us from working and living there but we can still use

that little change to measure that right and we can understand it better because

we are in a much more controlled environment than it's possible down here

on earth for expedition 59 60 Nick Hague volunteered to be the human

test subject for the experiment so the benefit is when we get to the surface of

the Moon and there's dust and we know we had problems with lunar dust back in the

Apollo program we're going to be able to monitor the health of the astronauts

even better while they're working up there and and diagnose problems and

protect us while we're exploring the moon space is not easy it's a it's a

risky business it's always going to be a risky business but why do we do it

we've been up there for two decades on the space station in this amazing

international collaboration performing science collecting data so the

scientists on the ground can learn more about our planet

they can learn more about humans in our bodies and and how they behave they can

learn more about the universe that surrounds us and and all of that is

advancing humanity and so we accept those risks so that we can continue to

move forward and continue to expand the boundaries of what we know that's it's a

vital mission and we're doing it every day and I want people to when they see a

launch like that I want them to connect that launch with the importance of the

mission and that's just it there are so many launches happening every year so

many historic moments that aren't to be missed which is why we're committed to

bringing you more launch coverage than ever before that means we'll be there to

talk about the next crew Dragon launch Boeing Starliner

and the latest International moon missions if there's anything you'd like

us to cover on future missions let us know down in the comments and as always

thanks for watching seeker and I'll see you next time