The Endeavour takes astronauts to the International Space Station
On August 1, 2025, SpaceX, the rocket company owned by Elon Musk, launched the Endeavour carrying 4 astronauts from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to the ISS, which stands for International Space Station.
The four astronauts on the Endeavour are Zena Cardman and Michael Fincke from NASA, Kimiya Yui from Japan, and Oleg Platonov from Russia. These four people are called Crew 11, because they are the eleventh group sent by SpaceX to the International Space Station. When the rocket was about to be launched at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, there were clouds in the sky, clouds could disrupt the launch, so that could be bad news. Fortunately, the clouds didn’t disrupt the launch, and Steven Stich, the manager of NASA’s commercial crew program, said, “We got very lucky today, I would say.”
Crew 11 will be the sixth trip for Endeavour. This spacecraft, the Endeavour, got its name because when the first two people came back from the International Space Station, they decided on the spacecraft the “Endevour”. The first two people to come back from the International Space Station on August 2, 2020 are Robert L. Behnken and Douglas G. Hurley. Crew 11’s job on the ISS is to conduct some new technology and scientific experiments.
By coincidence, the day that crew 11 took off with the Endeavour was the same as when the first people came back from the ISS on the same spacecraft. “While we’re on fun facts about this Dragon spacecraft, it’s also a spacecraft that holds the record for the most time in orbit by any American spacecraft,” said Sarah Walker, the director of Dragon Mission Management at SpaceX. Another fun fact about the Endeavour is that it has made 4 round trips from the International Space Station back to NASA already.
Endeavour has the record for the longest mission ever, which lasted 235 days in orbit during Crew 8( the eighth group to be sent to the ISS by SpaceX ), and the cumulative record, “which is 700 days and counting,” Ms. Walker said
The Crew 11 astronauts are scheduled to stay at the space station for six months. By then, Endeavour will be approaching a total of 1,000 days in space. Once crew 11 arrives, astronauts from the crew will go back to Earth. The Crew 10 astronauts have been in the ISS since March, and will begin to pack up to return to Earth.