We’ll have to attend one further day to see SpaceX’s subsequent astronaut mission raise off.
That flight, a four-person mission to the International Space Station (ISS) often called Crew-6, had been scheduled to launch from NASA’s Kennedy House Heart in Florida early Sunday morning (Feb. 26).
However, after a prolonged flight readiness assessment (FRR) on Tuesday (Feb. 21), NASA and SpaceX determined to delay the liftoff by 24 hours. The present plan requires a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to launch Crew-6’s Dragon capsule Endeavour on Monday (Feb. 27) at 1:45 a.m. EST (0645 GMT). You possibly can watch it stay right here at House.com when the time comes.
Associated: Meet the SpaceX Crew-6 astronauts
The additional day will permit launch groups to work by way of just a few minor points with Endeavour and the Falcon 9, SpaceX and NASA representatives mentioned throughout a post-FRR briefing on Tuesday night.
For instance, staff members wish to additional analyze the thermal efficiency of the “pod panels” that cowl Endeavour’s exterior, mentioned Steve Stich, supervisor of NASA’s Industrial Crew Program. Additionally they wish to take a look at the composite overwrapped stress vessels (COPVs) within the Falcon 9, bottles of helium that reside within the rocket’s liquid-oxygen tank.
“We’ve got seen that there was mixing achieved in some areas on the liner, and now we have some testing and evaluation to go make it possible for these are good for flight,” Stich mentioned of the COPV work throughout Tuesday’s briefing.
The groups additionally noticed a possible concern in a Falcon 9 that not too long ago launched a giant batch of SpaceX’s Starlink web satellites to orbit. The Starlink mission was profitable, however “there was a bit little bit of proof of some combustion” in one in every of that rocket’s engine bays, Stich mentioned. The Crew-6 staff is taking a look at that different rocket now to make it possible for the potential combustion concern is not one thing to fret about on the upcoming astronaut launch.
The Falcon 9 first stage that launched the Starlink batch was flying for the twelfth time, whereas Crew-6 will make use of a brand-new rocket, Stich famous. Nonetheless, it is common observe for SpaceX and NASA to look at knowledge from all Falcon 9 flights to tell their analyses forward of crew-carrying missions.
NASA and SpaceX anticipate Endeavour and its rocket experience to be cleared for liftoff when this upcoming work is full.
“I do not suppose these issues will likely be a priority for the crew flight, however we do not take issues as a right; we wish to be sure that they’re actually prepared,” Invoice Gerstenmaier, vp of construct and flight reliability at SpaceX, mentioned within the post-FRR briefing.
Crew-6 will ship NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, the United Arab Emirates’ Sultan Al-Neyadi and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev to the ISS for a roughly six-month keep. Al-Neyadi will make historical past as the primary Arab astronaut to fly a long-duration mission to the orbiting lab.
As its identify suggests, Crew-6 would be the sixth operational astronaut mission that SpaceX flies to the ISS for NASA. Elon Musk’s firm has launched two different crewed missions to the orbiting lab along with these six — the Demo-2 take a look at flight for NASA in 2020 and Ax-1, a personal flight operated by Houston firm Axiom House in April 2022.
Endeavour has flown three of these earlier ISS missions — Demo-2, Ax-1 and Crew-2, which launched in April 2021.
There’s presently one other Dragon docked on the ISS — the capsule Endurance, which launched final October on the Crew-5 mission. The 4 Crew-5 spaceflyers — NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann, Japan’s Koichi Wakata and cosmonaut Anna Kikina — are anticipated to return to Earth about 5 days after welcoming their Crew-6 counterparts to the station.
Cassada, Mann, Wakata and Kikina are sharing the orbiting lab with three different spaceflyers in the meanwhile — cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin and NASA’s Frank Rubio, who flew to the ISS on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft final September.
Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio have been purported to return to Earth on that very same Soyuz subsequent month, however they will now be staying aloft till late September or so. Their Soyuz sprang a leak on Dec. 14, rapidly dropping all of its coolant to space. Russia plans to launch a replacement Soyuz for them on Thursday (Feb. 23.)
Mike Wall is the creator of “Out There (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a e-book in regards to the seek for alien life. Comply with him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in new tab). Comply with us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or on Facebook (opens in new tab).
