SpaceX’s rocket journey for its subsequent NASA astronaut launch from Florida is on the pad and prepared for flight.
Topped with a Crew Dragon capsule, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket rolled out of its hangar at Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy House Middle in Cape Canaveral late final Wednesday and was hoisted into launch place Thursday morning (Feb. 23), SpaceX stated. Liftoff is set for Feb. 27 at 1:45 a.m. EST (0645 GMT).
“Falcon 9 and Dragon are vertical at Launch Advanced 39A; concentrating on Monday, February 27 for launch of the Crew-6 mission,” SpaceX wrote on Twitter alongside a sequence of photographs of the rocket and capsule on the launch pad.
SpaceX’s Crew-6 mission will launch NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg to the Worldwide House Station alongside Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev of Roscosmos and United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi. The 4 males will launch aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour, which is making its fourth flight after flying SpaceX’s Demo-2 crew test flight in 2020, Crew-2 flight in 2021 and the non-public Axiom Mission-1 flights that adopted. Crew-6 is SpaceX’s seventh crewed mission for NASA (together with the Demo-2 demonstration flight) below the company’s industrial crew program, and the corporate’s ninth human spaceflight total.
On Friday (Feb. 24), the Crew-6 astronauts and launch controllers will conduct a gown rehearsal for his or her Feb. 27 liftoff. SpaceX can also be anticipated to carry out an engine static fireplace take a look at of the Falcon 9 on Friday, NASA mission managers have stated.
Falcon 9 and Dragon are vertical at Launch Advanced 39A; concentrating on Monday, February 27 for launch of the Crew-6 mission → https://t.co/bJFjLCiTbK pic.twitter.com/uxVohW8V11February 23, 2023
The @SpaceX Falcon 9 and Dragon spacecraft for the #Crew6 mission to @Space_Station was rolled out at Launch Advanced 39A in a single day. Extra 📷 https://t.co/EE2427KKIY pic.twitter.com/f1Q2Uutu1kFebruary 23, 2023
The launch preparations for Crew-6 come as Roscosmos prepares to launch an empty Soyuz MS-23 crew capsule to switch the broken Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft at present docked on the space station. Soyuz MS-22 suffered a coolant leak in December that has left the capsule unsafe to return its crew of three — NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin— again house as deliberate. 4 different astronauts make up the remainder of the station’s present crew.
Soyuz MS-23 will launch tonight to switch the stricken MS-22 car and function a lifeboat for the stranded Rubio, Prokopyev and Petelin. The three males will return to Earth in September, six months later than deliberate, because of the spaceship swap.
In the meantime, SpaceX is planning to launch one other Falcon 9 rocket this weekend to ship a brand new flock of Starlink internet satellites into orbit. That mission is at present scheduled for no sooner than Sunday, Feb. 26, at 1:12 p.m. EST (1812 GMT). SpaceX has stated it might postpone the Starlink launch to present precedence to its Crew-6 astronaut launch.
E-mail Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or comply with him @tariqjmalik. Observe us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Instagram.
