There are two NASA astronauts that entered quarantine of the 13th of May in order to prepare for a historic launch to space. They will be onboard a SpaceX spacecraft.
Astronauts Robert “Bob” Behnken and Douglas “Doug” Hurley have entered quarantine to prepare for their launch to the International Space Station, abroad the Crew Dragon vehicle from SpaceX. They will be part of the SpaceX’s Demo-2 mission. The mission will launch on the 27th of May, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. This will be the first crewed mission to go to space after NASA’s Space Shuttle program, which ended back in 2011.
This quarantine is known as “flight crew health stabilization.” They entered it two weeks before to make sure that they are healthy and that they will not be carrying the virus to the space station. Even if everyone is being cautious about this new virus, the new constraints of the astronauts are standard. But this kind of quarantine is not something new among astronauts. It has been done since the early days of the Apollo program, and they do it in order to ensure crew safety.
They can stay at home, but with certain conditions
For the Soyuz launches, which took off from Kazakhstan, astronauts have to enter the pre-flight quarantine just near the launch sites. But US astronauts do have specific options when it comes to where they complete the quarantine. If they are able to complete it at home, then they can stay at home until they leave for the Kennedy Space Center. They must be there on the 20th of May. But if they can’t do it at home, they need to get to NASA’s Astronaut Quarantine Facility at Johnson Space Center. But being quarantined at home cannot be easy: they cannot stay at home if there are other persons who have to leave the house.
