SpaceX Crew-3 capsule named 'Endurance' by Raja Chari as tribute to human tenacity

Astronaut Raja Chari, who will lead SpaceX’s upcoming Crew-3 mission, announced the name of the Crew Dragon capsule, on October 7, as “Endurance”. NASA and the International Space Station (ISS) made the public announcement in a short video clip via the micro-blogging site Twitter. The launch will carry four astronauts to the ISS on October 30, in what will be SpaceX’s third crew launch and fourth manned flight in total.

The name, 'Endurance', is a tribute to human tenacity

In the short video clip of Chari, the Indian-origin astronaut said that the name “Endurance is a tribute to the tenacity of the human spirit, as we push humans and machines farther than we ever have” and is “also a nod to the fact that the development teams, the production teams the training teams that got us here have endured through a pandemic.”

Talking about the SpaceX capsule that the astronauts will use, he further added, “And then of course, just the fact that we are going to reuse this vehicle. So, one of the really cool things about the SpaceX Dragon is, we'll be the first ones to use Endurance, but it won't be the last time it's used."

Crew-3 mission

The upcoming mission is a collaboration of NASA and SpaceX, which both entities agreed upon under NASA's 2014 Commercial Crew Program. As of now, the agencies have conducted two flights to the Space station which were the Crew-1 in November 2020 and Crew-2 in April 2021. 

Chari will be accompanied by NASA astronauts Thomas Marshburn and Kayla Barron and the European Space Agency's (ESA) Matthias Maurer. As per NASA, the launch is a rotation flight that will see Crew-2 astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur of NASA, ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet, Japanese Space Agency's (JAXA) Akihiko Hoshide vacate the ISS for the new four. Interestingly, Chari, Barron and Maurer will be visiting space for the first time ever whereas it will be the third journey for Marshburn. With the upcoming launch, Chari will become the fifth space traveller having an Indian background after Kalpana Chawla, Sunita Williams, Rakesh Sharma and the most recent visitor Shirisha Bandla.

(Image: Twitter/@NASA_Johnson)