The mission hasn't changed in 25 years.
It's to get to the space station, conduct research and come home.
How we’re going to do that is going to look a little bit different.
Alex and myself are going to launch with two empty seats,
so we've got room for Butch and Suni to join us once we get there.
They've been on orbit months already, and one of the biggest challenges
ahead for Alex and I, one of the most exciting aspects,
is how are we going to integrate into their crew and get to work on
the space station doing the research and performing the spacewalks
and the station upgrades and helping us continue that mission of discovery.
The International Space Station is this unique place
that we have built over the course of a decade,
with 100 launches and 100 spacewalks to assemble it on orbit.
It lets us remove gravity from all of our science experiments.
You've all seen video of balls of water floating around and morphing,
and we can do that with other materials and see what properties
we aren't able to see when gravity just squashes everything flat.
That knowledge helps us make life better on the ground.
I've had the privilege of spending more than 200 days on the International Space Station,
and what is crystal clear to me is how important
the international is in the International Space Station.
Together, we accomplish more than we could by ourselves.
Together we tackle all the problems
that that dynamic nature of space throws at us.
The more we explore, the more we try to overcome
all those challenges of living in weightlessness,
in a high radiation environment, and how to counteract those things,
the more we learn about how the human body works,
but a long duration mission is something really to cherish
because it's a unique opportunity to let your body fully adapt.
And then at some point, you reach this kind of steady state where you are
working and living in space, and that's your normal.
Spaceflight is hard, it's dynamic, it's unpredictable.
But that's no different than the way it's always been.
And just being able to watch the agency navigate those decisions
over the last several months and balance the risk and the safety of the crew
has been phenomenal.
And what is crystal clear in that entire process is the commitment
to making sure that when we launch crews, we're going to bring them home safe.
I'm excited to get back to the space station.
I'm excited to be part of Expedition 72,
so we can get to work, because that's what this is all about.
It's about exploration, exploring
the human body, exploring Earth, exploring the universe.
It's about discovery. It's about learning.
It's about how do we imagine the impossible? And make it possible?