McClain reflects on collaboration, exploration and humanity as Crew-10 arrives in Florida: ‘Look at what we do when we work together’

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Astronaut Anne McClain stressed the value of exploration and collaboration in her brief remarks Friday shortly after arriving at the Kennedy Space Center.

The Spokane native and her fellow Crew-10 members – NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers, Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov and Takuya Onishi, an astronaut with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency – deplaned in Cape Canaveral on Friday ahead of their launch scheduled for Wednesday at 4:48 p.m., Pacific. Viewers at home can catch the liftoff live on the agency’s streaming platform, NASA+.

McClain will serve as commander for the launch and flight, and Onishi will take over the role once operations aboard the International Space Station begin.

“It’s so incredible to fly into this landing strip knowing that we don’t have a return ticket back to Houston,” McClain said. “We are going to take a little bit of an adventure before we go back.”

After the team waved and posed for photos for media outlets from around the globe, McClain took a moment to touch on the significance of the work aboard the ISS, collaboration between global powers, as well as seeking out similarities, rather than differences that sow division.

McClain noted how far the Commercial Crew program has come since her last trip to the ISS in December 2018.

At the time, the trip was one of the first crewed flights to come out of the partnership program between the space agency and corporations such as SpaceX.

Wednesday’s launch will be the 10th crew rotation mission with SpaceX, and the 11th human spaceflight to come out of the program.

“It’s still absolutely incredible to me,” McClain said.

Of those journeys, the outlier is a flight aboard Boeing’s Starliner, which returned to Earth without NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore aboard due to concerns about the craft’s safety during re-entry. Crew-10’s arrival marks the end of a weeklong trip turned into an eight-month stay for Williams and Willmore.

McClain stressed the crew is “not just flying up to space to fly up to space,” but to partake in research that pushes the envelope on human space travel, as well as improving life back on Earth.

Over the years, that work has had profound impacts on daily life that some may not even realize, McClain said. Those who’ve received Lasik surgery, immunotherapy for cancer treatment, therapies for Parkinson’s, a crystal clear view of natural disasters or supplements to alleviate osteoporosis are just some examples of those who’ve benefited from the “incredible, incredible research platform,” McClain said.

“It’s not just our mission, it’s your mission, too,” she said.

July will mark the 50th anniversary of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the first internationally crewed space station in which the Soviet Union and the U.S. successfully docked an Apollo spacecraft launched from Florida with the Soyuz capsule launched from Kazakhstan.

McClain noted the impending milestone, while marveling at the hard work and cooperation that went into having two former adversaries become partners.

“It is far easier to be enemies than it is to be friends, and it is harder to build partnerships and build relationships than it is to break them,” McClain said. “And it’s easier to critique than it is to participate.”

McClain closed her remarks with a request to follow that 1970s example and take the hard way.

“The success of these programs rely on leaders of character from all countries, all walks of life, all agencies, all badges, all companies,” McClain said. “Leaders of character, visionaries, who wake up every single day and work on a long-term plan for the benefit of all of us.

“If Crew-10 could ask one thing of everybody here, it’s to do that in your own lives, to build these bridges, to build relationships, to build partnerships, because look at what we do when we work together.”