ESA’s Thomas Pesquet, NASA’s Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough and JAXA’s Akihiko Hoshide tried out their SpaceX flight suits.
GODMOTHER
NASA and SpaceX are preparing for the second operational flight of the Crew Dragon spacecraft. Four astronauts will take a ride in the Dragon, raised in orbit on the top of the Falcon 9 workhorse, on Thursday, April 22. It will be an early morning flight and here’s how you can watch it live.
There will be some familiar equipment that will help the new crew descend from this stone. “Falcon 9, which will be used to launch this mission, uses the same booster as NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1, marking the first time a proven flight booster will be used for a manned launch,” NASA said in a statement. communiqué.
NASA TV will broadcast live the launch, which will take place at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The event is scheduled for 3:11 a.m., Thursday, April 22. It will take about a day to get to the station.
NASA astronauts Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough will be joined by Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency and Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. All four were already in space, requesting Join Twitter in March“I don’t want to introduce myself, but this crew could have the most combined experience in the history of space flight!”
We’ve received new crew portraits, so it’s time to introduce you # Crew2. I don’t want to introduce myself, but this crew could have the most combined experience in the history of space flight! More importantly, they are the best teammates ever 👇 pic.twitter.com/rXMnEhS7Pv
– Thomas Pesquet (@Thom_astro) March 31, 2021
SpaceX and NASA are moving to the normal phase of their partnership for the commercial crew program. Early test flights went well as well Crew-1 mission in 2020 a mers lin. Crew-2 marks the second crew rotation flight for Crew Dragon and the first with two international partner astronauts on board.
NASA is waiting for the launch of a Crew-3 mission in the fall, which could take off on October 23. Crew-2 would seek to return to Earth not long after.
Follow CNET’s 2021 Space Calendar to stay up to date with all the latest space news this year. You can even add it to your own Google Calendar.