Expedition 72

Active Mission

Expedition 72 began on Sept. 23, 2024 and ends in Spring 2025. The orbital residents will explore a variety of space phenomena to benefit humans on and off the Earth including pharmaceutical manufacturing, advanced life support systems, genetic sequencing in microgravity, and more.

Mission Type

Humans in Space

meet the crew

Alexey Ovchinin, Suni WIlliams, Butch Wilmore, Ivan Vagner, Don Pettit, Aleksandr Gorbunov, Nick Hague

start

Sep. 23, 2024

Landing

Spring 2025

Crew Members

Alexey Ovchinin, Flight Engineer
Suni Williams, Commander
Butch Wilmore, Flight Engineer
Ivan Vagner, Flight Engineer
Don Pettit, Flight Engineer
Aleksandr Gorbunov, Flight Engineer
Nick Hague, Flight Engineer

Crew and Cargo Missions

12/16/2024 – SpaceX CRS-31 Undock
11/23/2024 – Progress 90 Dock
11/21/2024 – Progress 90 Launch
11/19/2024 – Progress 88 Undock
11/5/2024 – SpaceX CRS-31 Dock
11/4/2024 – SpaceX CRS-31 Launch
11/3/2024 – SpaceX Crew-9 Relocation
10/25/2024 – SpaceX Crew-8 Splashdown
10/23/2024 – SpaceX Crew-8 Undock
9/29/2024 – SpaceX Crew-9 Dock
9/28/2024 – SpaceX Crew-9 Launch
9/23/2024 – Soyuz MS-25 Land
9/23/2024 – Soyuz MS-25 Undock

Spacewalks

Date: Jan. 16, 2025
Duration: 6 hours
Spacewalkers: Nick Hague, Suni Williams

Date: Dec. 19, 2024
Duration: 7 hours, 17 minutes
Spacewalkers: Alexey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner

Expedition 72

368 Images

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Expedition 72 Resources

The official insignia of the Expedition 72 crew that will live and work aboard the International Space Station for a six-month space research mission beginning in late 2024. The simple patch design highlights the configuration of the orbital laboratory with its six roll-out solar arrays augmenting the station's power generation system.

Mission Blogs

The daily blog updates for Expedition 72 highlighting crew and cargo missions, spacewalks, and advanced space research.

The Solid Fuel Ignition and Extinction (SoFIE) Growth and Extinction Limits (GEL) experiment aboard the International Space Station (ISS) studies flame growth and extinction in an effort to improve fire safety in space. This image shows a sequence of snapshots taken about 3 seconds apart. During this test point, the ambient oxygen concentration starts relatively high (28%). Initially, the flame is seen as yellow and sooty. As the ambient pressure is reduced, the flame becomes bluer and continues to shrink until fully extinguished. This gives researchers pressure limit data points for flame extinction that could help improve crew and spacecraft safety for future exploration missions.

Mission Science

Learn more about the range of advanced space research, technology demonstrations, and more the Expedition 72 crew is conducting.

The mission insignia for the SpaceX Crew-8 mission

SpaceX Crew-8 Science

The SpaceX Crew-8 members explored the causes of neurodegenerative disorders, protecting plants from space radiation, space-caused changes in eye structure and vision, and more.

SpaceX Crew-9 Science

The SpaceX Crew-9 members are investigating blood cell development in space, X-rays emitted by neutron stars, taking a vitamin supplement to improve vision, spavce agriculture, and more.

One of the Expedition 41 crew members aboard the International Space Station, flying at an altitude of 222 nautical miles above a point in the Atlantic Ocean several hundred miles off the coast of Africa near the Tropic of Cancer, photographed this eye-catching panorama of the night sky and the Milky Way on Sept. 27. NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, flight engineer, tweeted the image, which was taken with an electronic still camera, set with a 24mm focal length. In his accompanying comments, Wiseman stated, "Sahara sands make the Earth glow orange."

Mission Imagery

The Expedition 71 crew is taking images of the Earth, the orbiting station, their daily lives aboard, and the experiments they conduct during their stay, plus so much more. Check out some of the images in the Expedition 71 gallery.