NASA’s subsequent crewed mission is approaching launch date.
NASA and SpaceX are concentrating on mid-February for the launch of the subsequent industrial crew mission to the International Space Station (ISS). A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will carry a crew of 4 to orbit aboard the Crew Dragon Endeavor, the place the spacecraft will rendezvous and dock with the ISS for roughly six months of analysis and station upkeep.
Crew-6 can be SpaceX’s tenth crewed flight, and the fourth for Dragon Endeavor, which additionally launched Demo-2, Crew-2, and Axiom House’s Ax-1 mission.
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Aboard Endeavor, a duo of NASA astronauts, Mission Commander Stephen Bowen and Pilot Woody Hoburg, will fly alongside United Arab Emirates (UAE) astronaut Sultan Al Neyadi and Roscosmos cosmonaut and mission specialist Andrey Fedyaev. For all however Bowen, who’s already flown three missions to the ISS aboard the space shuttle, Crew-6 can be this group’s first launch.
Bowen and Hoburg have been each added to the Crew-6 manifest in December 2021. Fedyaev was added in July, 2022, as part of a crew swap agreement between NASA and Roscosmos, the Russian space company. And on July 25, 2022, simply ten days after the NASA/Roscosmos crew swap announcement, Al Neyadi was added as the ultimate member of the Crew-6 listing.
Al Neyadi’s addition was a part of a 2021 contract between NASA and Axiom House, whereby a NASA astronaut would fly on a Soyuz mission to the ISS in alternate for a future seat for Axiom on a industrial U.S. launch. Axiom House partnered with the Mohammed bin Rashid House Heart of the UAE to fill that seat in April of final 12 months, and Al Neyadi was chosen, in keeping with a NASA press release (opens in new tab) on the time.
A brief overlap of space station personnel will happen because the members of Crew-6 get acclimated to their new orbital setting. Crew-6’s arrival will deliver the ISS occupancy to eleven within the days main as much as the departure of Crew-5 and the Dragon Endurance spacecraft that flew them there.
The Crew-6 astronauts’ keep aboard the ISS is slated by the arrival of SpaceX’s Crew-7 mission, at the moment scheduled for someday within the fall of 2023.
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