American astronomer-turned-medical physicist and now NASA astronaut Chris Williams joined two Russian cosmonauts aboard the Soyuz spacecraft on Thursday for a Thanksgiving flight to the International Space Station.
With Commander Sergei Kud-Sverchkov at the controls of the Soyuz MS-28/74S spacecraft, flanked by flight engineer Sergei Mikaev to his left and Williams to his right, the Soyuz 2.1a launch vehicle roared to life at 4:27 a.m. ET and sailed smoothly away from the Russian-leased Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
A Russian Soyuz 2.1a rocket will lift off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and carry two cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut on a flight to the International Space Station. /Photo: NASA/Bill Ingalls
Nine minutes and 45 seconds later, the Soyuz spacecraft lifted off from the launch vehicle's upper stage, its two solar wings deployed, and the crew set off in pursuit of the space station. Three hours later, they caught up with the orbital outpost and at 7:34 a.m. Eastern time headed for docking with the laboratory's Earth-facing module, Dawn.
Williams, a former volunteer firefighter and emergency medical technician who earned a Ph.D. He received a bachelor's degree in astrophysics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was a board-certified medical physicist at Harvard Medical School when he was selected to join NASA's 2021 astronaut corps.
He and flight engineer Mikaev made their first space flight on Thursday, and Kud-Sverchkov is a seasoned veteran, having spent 185 days aboard the space station in 2020-2021.
“This is a really great team,” Williams told NASA. “Sergei and Sergei are just wonderful people, very kind, very interested, very intellectually curious, and it’s really fun. There were a lot of really great discussions, just talking and talking about different things.
“It was great to spend some time with them in Star City and also be able to spend some time with them in Houston during our training.”
The Soyuz MS-28 spacecraft, carrying commander Sergei Kud-Sverchkov, flight engineer Sergei Mikaev and NASA astronaut Chris Williams, approaches for docking at the International Space Station three hours after launch, slipping past the Soyuz MS-27 ferry that will carry the station's three departing pilots back to Earth early next month. / Credit: NASA
The Soyuz MS-28 crew replaces Soyuz MS-27/73S commander Sergei Ryzhikov, flight engineer Alexei Zubritsky and NASA astronaut Johnny Kim, who were launched to the space station in April last year. They plan to return to Earth on December 9 to complete their eight-month stay on the ISS.
Also ready to welcome Williams and his teammates aboard the station are NASA Crew 11 commander Zena Cardman, Michael Finke, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui and cosmonaut Oleg Platonov. They launched a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket last August and plan to return home in February or March after a replacement crew of 12 arrives.
All 11 station pilots planned to gather for the traditional welcome on board via video link with mission leaders and their families in Moscow before receiving a safety briefing and becoming familiar with the space station's complex systems.
The crew of the Soyuz MS-28/74S spacecraft. From left to right: NASA astronaut Christopher Williams, commander Sergei Kud-Sverchkov and flight engineer Sergei Mikaev. / Credit: NASA
Williams, an Eagle Scout with a private pilot's license, stands out among the super successful.
After graduating from Stanford University with a bachelor's degree in physics, he pursued radio astronomy research on his way to a Ph.D. and “there was a volunteer fire department across the street from my house. And I thought, oh, this sounds like something fun and interesting.”
“So I started volunteering. I was trained as an ambulance doctor and firefighter, and just started doing this on a volunteer basis. And I found that I really liked it. It gave me a lot of satisfaction knowing that… at the end of my shift, I would actually be making a very direct and immediate positive impact on someone's life.”
He maintained this throughout graduate school. Then, while he was finishing his doctorate in astrophysics, Williams said he met a doctor he knew at a party who told him that “there is a great need for physicists in medicine, particularly in radiation oncology, where we use radiation to treat cancer.”
The crew of Soyuz MS-28 will meet the current laboratory crew of seven people on board the space station. Back row from left to right: Crew 11 cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, Soyuz MS-27 astronaut Johnny Kim, Soyuz MS-27 commander Sergei Ryzhikov, Soyuz MS-27 flight engineer Alexey Zubritsky and Japanese Crew 11 cosmonaut Kimiya Yui; Front row, left to right: Crew 11 flight engineer Mike Finke and Crew 11 commander Zena Cardman. / Credit: NASA
He spoke with several other people, including one who had been an astronomer before switching to medical physics, and “I was amazed at how much of what I knew and learned as an astronomer would actually be useful and directly applicable to medicine.”
“Much of the mathematics behind (medical) imaging is the same mathematics that you actually use in a radio telescope to create an image,” Williams said. “It was nice to see that the imaging techniques I used as a (radio astronomer) actually translated directly into medicine.”
At the time of his selection as an astronaut, Williams was working at Harvard Medical School as a clinical physicist and researcher. He is the second member of the 2021 cosmonaut class to fly into space, and was assigned to the Soyuz MS-28 mission shortly after completing cosmonaut candidate training.
According to him, preparations for the launch of the Russian spacecraft were difficult, primarily due to the need for a flight. He credited his wife Aubrey for keeping the family's life smooth throughout this time.
As for what he expects from his eight-month stay in space, Williams echoed a familiar theme.
“I have a lot of different goals, but I think the biggest one and what I'm most excited about is to really be able to put my knowledge into practice and do a really good job of advancing the science and research that we do on the space station.”
“I think this is incredibly important. I think it's incredibly interesting and incredibly inspiring, and I'm very lucky to have the opportunity to contribute to it.”
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