NASA has cleared the next astronaut flight to the International Space Station for launch on Friday (September 27), a weekend launch that will help bring two Boeing Starliner astronauts home and onto a new SpaceX launch pad.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft will launch two Crew-9 astronauts, NASA veteran Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov, to the International Space Station from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Saturday, September 28. It’s 17pm EDT (1517 GMT).
“We’re heading toward launch and heading toward 1:17 p.m. tomorrow,” Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, told reporters Friday evening at a news conference. “We’re upright on the pad, and the next big activity will be loading cargo here this afternoon and then getting ready to fly.” You can watch the Crew-9 launch live on Space.com, sponsored by NASA and SpaceX, starting at 9:10 a.m. EST (1310 GMT). You can also watch the launch on YouTube NASANASA+ channel for live broadcast and SpaceX’s X page.
SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission is a break from the company’s typical International Space Station crew rotation flights for NASA in several ways.
First, there is the size of the crew.
Half dragon staff
For the first time since the test flight in May 2020, SpaceX is launching just two astronauts to the International Space Station aboard the Dragon spacecraft. That’s because NASA pulled two other crew members — its original commander, Zena Cardman, and three-time shuttle pilot Stephanie Wilson — from the flight to make room for two astronauts who have been stuck on the International Space Station since Boeing’s Starliner capsule returned to Earth without them. On September 7th.
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams blasted off to the station in June on the first-ever crewed test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. But concerns about the Starliner’s propulsion system prompted NASA to keep Willmore and Williams aboard the International Space Station and bring the Starliner home without a crew. Their original eight-day mission turned into a full eight-month space journey. This month, Williams took command of the station’s current Expedition 72 crew while she and Willmore await a flight home aboard the Dragon’s Crew-9 capsule in February 2025.
To accommodate the return of the Starliner astronauts, Cardman and Wilson had to give up their seats, devoting years of training to their Crew-9 flight, now piloted by Hague. NASA is filling Crew-9’s two empty seats with additional cargo and supplies, including a new Dragon spacesuit for Willmore (one for Williams is already on board the International Space Station).
“I just want you to know that we will find places for them to fly,” Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations and a former astronaut, said of Cardman and Wilson. “And we really appreciate how difficult it is to give up on the mission and wait a little longer.”
Also new to the Crew-9 flight is SpaceX’s choice of launch pad.
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SpaceX’s new astronaut platform
To date, SpaceX has launched every NASA astronaut mission from Kennedy Space Center’s historic Launch Complex 39A, which hosted Apollo and Space Shuttle launches before SpaceX leased it from the US agency. However, SpaceX also launches unmanned missions from Space Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, which is located near the Kennedy Space Center.
This platform was previously used by the US Air Force to launch Titan missiles from 1965 to 2005. according to Cape Canaveral Space Museum. In 1996, it was used to launch a Titan 3C rocket carrying a mock-up of the military space station’s Manned Orbiting Laboratory and the Gemini capsule (with no crew on board). According to NASA.
Newly upgraded to host astronaut launches, the SLC-40 pad now has a crew access tower and boom, a chute-based escape system to carry the crew away in case of danger, and should function much like SpaceX’s Pad 39A site. It also means more flexibility for SpaceX.
“I think operating from Pad 40 gives us a lot of unique capabilities that we can leverage,” Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice president of construction and flight reliability, told reporters.
Having a second launch pad capable of accommodating crew gives SpaceX breathing space to handle complex launches at its two launch sites in Florida. The company is currently preparing Pad 39A for launch on the triple-boost Falcon Heavy rocket carrying NASA’s flagship Europe Clipper mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa on October 10. Without a second crew-certified platform, SpaceX wouldn’t be able to perform both missions, Gerstenmaier says. He said.
Related to: How to watch SpaceX’s Crew-9 astronaut launch for NASA
“It also allows us to put two crew missions very close together, back-to-back, and know where we are if we need to do that,” he added. “So I think it’s good to have a backup capacity, or if something happens to the pad, or there’s some damage to the pad, or we need to remove the pad for maintenance.”
SpaceX and NASA previously targeted September 26 to launch the Crew-9 mission, but it was postponed to September 28 due to bad weather caused by Hurricane Helen, which made landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast in what would have been the missions’ original launch. day. NASA officials said the rain fallout from that storm on Florida’s Space Coast (on the other side of the state) was tropical storm-level winds and rain.
SpaceX had to clean and repaint part of its Dragon capsule after winds blew soot from a standard engine test into the capsule earlier this week. NASA said this cleaning helped ensure the capsules’ radiators and solar arrays worked properly during flight.
Currently, Space Force meteorologists are predicting a 55% chance of good weather on Saturday when Crew-9 launches. These conditions improve to 60% “go” on backup day Sunday (September 29). Another backup launch day on Monday (September 30) is available, if needed, NASA officials said.
Editor’s note: Tune in to Space.com early Saturday, September 28 to watch SpaceX’s Crew-9 astronaut launch for NASA. The launch webcast will begin at 9:10 AM EST (1310 GMT). A post-launch press conference is scheduled for 3pm EST (1900 GMT).
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