I’ll never forget this sight. Tonight I saw my first aurora from space. Luckily, there is a video to help remember and captured it perfectly. The KP index was over 5 tonight because of a solar event and the sky over Australia lit up and the green snaked across the atmosphere. I was filled with awe and gratitude. It’s a beautiful planet we share.

Here is a 360 view of the cupola where I got to spend some time with @Astro_ChrisW, soaking up his knowledge on cameras, stars, physics, and spacewalks. I was his backup for his launch, and now that I am here, he is passing on the knowledge he gained over 8 months on the @Space_Station, including a month as the only US crew member. I’m happy he gets to return but sad to not be able to immediately turn to him for advice on where to find an experiment, or how to organize the work bench with duct tape & ziplock bags, or how to get the perfect shot of the sunset. If you make it to the end of this video, there is a pretty nice one. I sped up the middle section so you can get there faster :) Here’s to our resident astrophysicist Chris Williams!

Spent the day inside the Life Sciences Glovebox with @astro_jessica, who is patiently teaching the new guy. She’s running IVGEN Mini, our IV fluid generation experiment, and the idea is simple to say and hard to do: turn the station’s drinking water into sterile, medical-grade IV fluid. Why it matters: IV bags expire in about 16 months, and a Mars mission could run a few years. You also can’t launch the 100+ liters a sick crew member might need. So instead of packing saline, we pack a filter and salt. Station water gets purified to pharmaceutical grade, mixes with premeasured sodium chloride, and comes out the other side as normal saline. As a physician, this one hits close to home. If we can make IV fluid 250 miles up, we can make it in a field hospital, a disaster zone, or anywhere the supply chain doesn’t reach.

Excited to launch aboard Soyuz MS-29 from Kazakhstan and begin an eight-month mission supporting NASA and Expedition 74/75. Grateful for the NASA community, friends, family, and loved ones and excited for tomorrow - tune in July 14th 9:43 am central time. Photo credit: Robert Markowitz / NASA.

After a scrub on Demo-2, I put on a Compton shirt, hat. The launch was successful in 2020 and ever since, it’s part of my routine for launch support: Crew-1, 2, 3, Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn. I wore it for @NASAArtemis 1 & 2 of course. Wear your Compton gear or share your good luck 🍀 tradition for MS-29 tomorrow! Launch is 9:47 am central. Photo credit / Robert Markowitz

“We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.” — T.S. Eliot 7/22/2015 Kjell Lindgren launched from baikanour and I was his flight doctor. 7/14/2026 I’ll launch from baikanour and he is supporting me from the flight operations directorate @NASA

L-7 days. 1 week! And here is another Launch tradition: we plant a tree in the alley of astronauts. There are trees going back as far as Yuri Gagarin. It’s a little hot, so I hope this one gets some water!

T-12 days to launch. Training was launch day equipment check, safety briefings, and, yes, launch playlist. Most notable was window 9 faces earth but has no UV coating so you can get a sunburn in minutes. It reminded me of working on Everest where UV increases 10% for every 1000 meters of altitude. Hikers and climbers would get snow blindness if they forgot their shades. Luckily it improves after a few days of relief.

It’s another blistering week in space flight! A successful EVA to fix the robotic arm, moonbase is becoming a reality, and our crew is getting closer to launch. We’ve started quarantine in Kazakhstan. Our first day was busy with training and preparation!

The Soyuz program traces its lineage to the first human spaceflight. Part of flying on the Soyuz includes joining that tradition. I wanted to share some of that experience here. Before we leave for Kazakhstan next week, we participated in that tradition and visited Red Square to lay flowers on the memorials of Yuri Gagarin, Sergey Korolev, and other cosmonauts. I’ve read a lot of books on the subject, but it’s hard to imagine what it was like to witness those first space flights. I can only think it was like seeing self-landing rockets, Artemis, and a moonbase become a reality. These next few years will be amazing to witness!