The four astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-3 mission arrived at Kennedy Space Center Tuesday ahead of a planned Halloween weekend launch to the International Space Station early Sunday morning. The crew includes Kayla Barron who is thrilled about going into space for the first time.
"We're really excited to hit the deck here at KSC," Barron said. "I think for all of us, especially the rookies on the flight, it still feels a little surreal like we don't really believe that actually go into space here early on the hours of Sunday morning."
Barron's crewmates include mission commander Raja Chari, pilot Tom Marshburn and German astronaut Matthias Maurer with the European Space Agency who has been designated the 600th person in space by NASA.
"Being number 600 in 60 years makes like 10 persons per year," Maurer said, "but I think in a very few years we'll see an exponential rise of that one because now we're entering the era of commercial spaceflight and all the suborbital flights, they also count."
If all goes as scheduled Maurer, Barron and the others will arrive at the orbiting lab early Monday morning for a 6-month stay. Liftoff Sunday morning is set for 2:21am Eastern time.
Image courtesy Getty