NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 Enters Quarantine

The four crew members slated to fly aboard NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 mission entered quarantine on Thursday, July 17, at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The start of NASA’s routine health stabilization program is one of the last major milestones before they travel from Houston to the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in preparation for launch to the International Space Station.

NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov will spend the next two weeks before liftoff in crew quarantine. The program started during Apollo to reduce preflight illnesses and prevent subsequent symptoms during flight. During Crew 11’s quarantine, contact with other people is limited and most interactions are handled remotely, while family and some members of the launch and flight teams undergo medical screening and must be cleared before interacting with the crew.

Prior to entering quarantine, the crew spent the last several months training for all phases of flight at NASA and SpaceX facilities in Texas, Florida, and California. At SpaceX’s facility in Hawthorne, California, the crew participated in training simulations focused on all aspects of the mission, including launch, docking, undocking, and departing from the space station, practicing on a high-fidelity simulator of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft with flight-realistic hardware, displays, and seats. The four crew members also participated in a water survival demonstration inside the Neutral Buoyancy Lab at NASA Johnson.

At NASA Kennedy, the crew trained at Launch Complex 39A, practicing on the emergency escape system, which employs slidewire baskets to deliver crew and pad teams from the launch tower to waiting armored vehicles on the ground. Earlier this month, the crew also participated in an equipment interface test, putting on their spacesuits, conducting suit leak checks, and familiarizing themselves with the interior of their Dragon spacecraft and ensuring their seats provided a good fit.

NASA and SpaceX are targeting no earlier than 12:09 p.m. EDT, Thursday, July 31, for the launch of the Crew-11 mission.

More details about the launch will be posted on the mission blog, @NASAKennedy on X, or NASA Kennedy on Facebook