NASA astronaut joins Russian cosmonauts for Thanksgiving Day trip to Worldwide House Station

American astronomer-turned-medical physicist and now NASA astronaut Chris Williams joined two Russian cosmonauts aboard a Soyuz ferry ship Thursday for a Thanksgiving Day flight to the Worldwide House Station.

With commander Sergey Kud-Sverchkov on the controls of the Soyuz MS-28/74S spacecraft, flanked on his left by flight engineer Sergey Mikaev and on the appropriate by Williams, the crew’s Soyuz 2.1a booster roared to life at 4:27 a.m. Jap and easily climbed away from the Russian-leased Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

9 minutes and 45 seconds later, the Soyuz spacecraft was launched from the booster’s higher stage, its two photo voltaic wings unfolded and the crew set off in pursuit of the area station. If all goes effectively, the automated two-orbit rendezvous will finish with a docking on the lab’s Earth-facing Rassvet module at 7:38 a.m. Jap.

Williams, a former volunteer fireplace fighter and emergency medical technician who went on to earn a Ph.D. in astrophysics from MIT, was a board-certified medical physicist at Harvard Medical Faculty when he was chosen to hitch NASA’s astronaut corps in 2021.

He and flight engineer Mikaev had been making their first area flight on Thursday, whereas Kud-Sverchkov is a seasoned veteran who logged 185 days aboard the area station in 2020-2021.

“It is a actually nice crew,” Williams mentioned in a NASA interview. “Sergey and Sergey are each simply completely great folks, actually variety, tremendous , tremendous intellectually curious, which is de facto enjoyable. Had lots of actually, actually nice discussions, simply speaking and speaking about issues.

“It has been been great to each spend a while with them over in Star Metropolis, and likewise to have the ability to spend a while with them in Houston via our coaching.”

The Soyuz MS-28 crew is changing Soyuz MS-27/73S commander Sergey Ryzhikov, flight engineer Alexey Zubritsky and NASA astronaut Jonny Kim, who had been launched to the area station final April. They plan to return to Earth on Dec. 9 to wrap up their eight-month keep on the ISS.

Additionally available to welcome Williams and his crewmates aboard the station: NASA Crew 11 commander Zena Cardman, Michael Fincke, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui and cosmonaut Oleg Platonov. They launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket final August and plan to return residence in February or March, after their replacements — Crew 12 — arrive.

All 11 station fliers deliberate to collect for a standard welcome aboard video name to mission managers and household again in Moscow earlier than a security briefing and the beginning of familiarization with the area station’s advanced techniques.

Williams, an Eagle Scout with a personal pilot’s license, is a standout amongst tremendous achievers.

After graduating from Stanford College with a bachelor’s diploma in physics, he was doing radio astronomy analysis on the way in which to a Ph.D. and, “down the road from my home, there was a volunteer fireplace division. And I used to be like, oh, that seems like one thing that could possibly be sort of like enjoyable and fascinating to do.”

“So I began volunteering. Obtained skilled as an EMT and a firefighter, and began simply kind of doing that on a volunteer foundation. And I discovered that I actually preferred it. I obtained lots of satisfaction out of realizing that … on the finish of the shift, I might have actually made a really direct and fast optimistic impression on any individual’s life.”

He stored that up all through graduate faculty. Then, as he was winding up his doctorate in astrophysics, Williams mentioned he bumped into a health care provider he knew at a celebration who informed him there was “an enormous want for physicists in drugs, particularly, in radiation oncology, the place we use radiation to deal with most cancers.”

He talked with a couple of different folks, together with one who had been an astronomer earlier than switching to medical physics, and “I used to be struck by how a lot of what I knew and had realized as an astronomer would truly be helpful and apply very on to drugs.”

“Numerous the maths behind (medical) imaging is the very same math that truly you employ in a radio telescope to make a picture,” Williams mentioned. “It was sort of neat to see that picture processing methods that I would used as (a radio astronomer) truly carried over fairly immediately into drugs.”

On the time of his choice as an astronaut, Williams was on the employees at Harvard Medical Faculty as a medical physicist and researcher. He’s the second member of the 2021 class of astronauts to fly in area, getting assigned to the Soyuz MS-28 mission shortly after ending astronaut candidate coaching.

He mentioned the coaching for launch on a Russian spacecraft was troublesome, primarily due to the journey required. He credited his spouse, Aubrey, with preserving the household’s life on a fair keel all through.

As for what he appears ahead to throughout his eight-month keep in area, Williams repeated a well-known theme.

“I’ve obtained lots of completely different objectives, however I believe the most important one, and the factor I am most enthusiastic about, is to actually have the ability to put my coaching into observe and to do a very good job to push ahead the science and analysis that we’re doing on on the area station.”

“I believe it is extremely necessary. I believe it is extremely fascinating and extremely inspiring, and I really feel actually fortunate to have the chance to contribute to that.”