NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission astronauts enter quarantine ahead of next month's flight to space station

Astronauts who will be flying aboard NASA's SpaceX Crew-5 mission to the International Space Station have entered their official quarantine period beginning Monday, September 19.

"The process of flight crew health stabilization is a routine part of final preparations for all missions to the space station. Spending the final two weeks before liftoff in quarantine will help ensure Crew-5 members are healthy, as well as protect the astronauts already on the space station," NASA said in a statement on Tuesday.

NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann, and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Koichi Wakata will lift off aboard SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft, named Endurance, from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy no earlier than 12:45 p.m. on Monday, October 3.

Crew-5 will dock Endurance to the forward port on the station's Harmony module about 24 hours later. Endurance previously flew NASA's Crew-3 mission to and from the orbiting laboratory.

NASA's SpaceX Crew-5 mission is the fifth crew rotation flight to the station as part of the agency's Commercial Crew Program. The agency's SpaceX Crew-4 mission astronauts will undock from the space station and splash down off the coast of Florida several days after Crew-5's arrival.

Meanwhile, the space station is gearing up for the arrival of three new crew members - NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin. The trio will liftoff inside the Soyuz crew ship at 9:54 a.m. EDT on Wednesday, September 21.