SpaceX’s rocket test-fired the rocket for its subsequent astronaut launch early Friday (Feb. 24) in a gown rehearsal to ship a brand new crew into space subsequent week.
A Falcon 9 rocket carried out a static fireplace for SpaceX on Friday (Feb. 24) with its Crew Dragon Endeavour capsule on prime. The gown rehearsal was one of many final milestones earlier than SpaceX launches four astronauts on the Crew-6 mission to the Worldwide House Station on Monday (Feb. 27). Liftoff is scheduled for 1:45 a.m. EST (0645 GMT) and you’ll watch it live on Space.com.
“Whereas standing on the launch pad at Kennedy House Heart’s Launch Complicated 39A in Florida, the rocket’s 9 Merlin first-stage engines roared to life for seven seconds, finishing the routine however important built-in static fireplace check,” NASA officers wrote of the profitable check in a blog post (opens in new tab).
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SpaceX’s Crew-6 mission will launch NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg to the International Space Station alongside Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev of Roscosmos and United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Al-Neyadi.
The Crew Dragon used for this mission is Endeavour, making its 4 flight after SpaceX’s Demo-2 crew test flight in 2020, Crew-2 flight in 2021 and the personal Axiom Mission-1 in 2022.
Crew-6 can be SpaceX’s seventh crewed mission for NASA (together with the Demo-2 demonstration flight) below the company’s business crew program, and the ninth time it despatched people to space.
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4 SpaceX Crew-6 astronauts stand in a row throughout their walkout on Feb. 24, 2023 forward of a gown rehearsal check with their Falcon 9 rocket. Behind them are help personnel within the entranceway to a help constructing at NASA’s Kennedy House Heart.
In the meantime, Roscosmos launched an empty Soyuz MS-23 capsule efficiently on Thursday (Feb. 23) to interchange the broken Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft that suffered a coolant leak in December.
MS-23 ought to dock with the space station on Saturday, offering a journey residence for NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin; their nominal return residence has been postponed six months to September to make room for an additional crew to alleviate them.
4 different astronauts on the ISS have one other SpaceX Crew Dragon at hand; in case of emergency, Rubio might squeeze in there whereas Prokopyev and Petelin would have the ability to journey the broken MS-22 again residence.
SpaceX is contemplating a launch of one other Falcon 9 rocket with Starlink internet satellites Sunday, Feb. 26 1:12 p.m. EST (1812 GMT), however that will push to make precedence for Crew-6.
Elizabeth Howell is the co-author of “Why Am I Taller (opens in new tab)?” (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a ebook about space medication. Comply with her on Twitter @howellspace (opens in new tab). Comply with us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or Facebook (opens in new tab).
