SpaceX simply despatched one other batch of astronauts towards the Worldwide House Station (ISS), and NASA could not be happier.
A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12:34 a.m. EST (0534 GMT) on Thursday (March 2), kicking off SpaceX’s four-person Crew-6 flight for NASA. The launch went off with out a hitch, and it was straightforward on the eyes as effectively.
“Wow, what a ravishing launch!” Kathy Lueders, NASA’s human spaceflight chief, mentioned in a information convention on Thursday morning, about two hours after liftoff.
“We have been actually having fun with the night time sky, with the Venus-Jupiter conjunction,” she added. “And any individual talked about to me that we added a shiny new star to that night time sky tonight.”
Associated: Live updates about SpaceX’s Crew-6 mission for NASA
That is to not recommend that the launch was flawless, nonetheless. For instance, Crew-6’s Dragon capsule, a automobile named Endeavour, skilled a minor challenge shortly after separating from the Falcon 9’s higher stage.
A sensor related to one of many six hooks that open Endeavour’s protecting nostril cone after it reaches space returned an anomalous studying, inflicting the capsule to change over to a backup system. The backup labored as designed, and the nostril cone opened on schedule.
These six nose-cone hooks are additionally a part of a 12-hook system that Endeavour will use to dock with the ISS, which the capsule is anticipated to do at 1:17 a.m. EST (0617 GMT) on Friday (March 3). However analyses point out that the doubtless anomalous sensor will not be an issue going ahead, mentioned Benji Reed, senior director of SpaceX’s human spaceflight program.
“At this cut-off date, we do not foresee any challenge, and we see no elevated threat to the crew for docking or for, after six months, when it comes time to shut that nostril cone once more,” Reed mentioned throughout the postlaunch information convention, referring to Crew-6’s deliberate return to Earth six months from now.
Additionally, Crew-6 was initially purported to launch on Monday morning (Feb. 27), however the attempt was scrubbed late within the countdown after groups observed a ground-system challenge.
Particularly, they could not verify that the Falcon 9 had entry to a full load of triethylaluminum triethylboron (TEA-TEB), a extremely flamable fluid that helps the rocket’s 9 first-stage Merlin engines ignite on the proper time.
Analyses quickly revealed that the TEA-TEB challenge was brought on by a clogged filter, Reed mentioned. The launch group changed the filter, and that solved the issue.
Crew-6’s launch occurred 4 years to the day after the liftoff of Demo-1, SpaceX’s first take a look at flight to the International Space Station for NASA’s Business Crew Program. Demo-1 was an uncrewed mission, nevertheless it laid the inspiration for a lot of astronaut flights to come back.
As its identify suggests, Crew-6 is the sixth operational crewed mission that SpaceX has performed for NASA. And that tally would not rely Demo-2, a take a look at flight that launched company astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley towards the ISS on Could 30, 2020.
Lueders talked about the Demo-1 anniversary and famous that it has spurred some reflection.
“Seven crewed missions over this final three years — so, simply phenomenal effort and development by the group,” she mentioned.
SpaceX’s general crewed-mission tally is increased than that, by the way in which. Elon Musk‘s firm has launched two personal astronaut flights to Earth orbit as effectively — the free-flying Inspiration4 in September 2021 and the Ax-1 mission to the ISS in April 2022.
The 4 Crew-6 astronauts are NASA’s Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev and Sultan Al Neyadi, who will turn out to be the primary individual from the United Arab Emirates to spend a six-month mission on the ISS.
About 5 days after Crew-6 arrives on the orbiting lab, SpaceX’s Crew-5 mission will depart, heading residence for Earth.
Mike Wall is the writer of “Out There (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a e-book concerning the seek for alien life. Comply with him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in new tab). Comply with us @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab), or on Facebook (opens in new tab) and Instagram (opens in new tab).