After an all-day review, NASA and SpaceX temporarily removed a reconditioned Crew Dragon spaceship and Falcon 9 missile for next Thursday’s launch to transport a crew of three men, a woman, to the International Space Station.
This will be the third manned orbit flight in US soil since the spacecraft withdrew in 2011 and the second operational Crew Dragon flight, as NASA moves away from the exclusive reliance of the Russian spacecraft Soyuz to transport astronauts to and from Earth orbit. .
Pending a minor technical issue, takeoff from historic block 39A at Kennedy Space Center is scheduled for 6:11 a.m. ET on April 22, which also happens to be Earth Day, starting with a 23-hour meeting with the station. spatial. .
NASA / SpaceX
Meanwhile, in Kazakhstan, Russian rescue crews and NASA support personnel were deployed for the planned re-entry and landing of a Soyuz spacecraft carrying three members of the space station’s crew back to Earth.
Soyuz MS-17 / 63S commander Sergey Ryzhikov, flight engineer Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and NASA astronaut Kate Rubins are scheduled to unload from the laboratory complex at 9:34 p.m. ET ET on Friday, preparing for a landing on the Kazakh steppe at 12:56 p.m. Saturday (10:56 local time).
The landing will take place just six days after another Soyuz arrived at the space station carrying three new crew members: Soyuz MS-18 / 64S commander Oleg Novitskiy, flight engineer Pyotr Dubrov and NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hey.
The two rotating flights of the Soyuz crew prepared on Thursday the launch of the SpaceX Crew Dragon and the return to Earth of another Crew Dragon on April 28, bringing four astronauts home after a stay of 164 days in space.
During a formal flight preparation review at the Kennedy Space Center, top managers agreed to continue launching SpaceX “Crew-2” astronauts next week and returning the four Crew-1 leaflets they are replacing.
NASA / SpaceX
“This was an important milestone today because when the teams come together … and we put the approval stamp that it is safe for our astronauts to get on the vehicle and launch and, in the case of the 1-crew, to come home safely “said Norm Knight, deputy director of flight operations at Johnson Space Center.
The Crew-2 Falcon 9 rocket, with the same first stage that launched the first Crew Dragon operational mission – Crew-1 – in November, was expected to be taken out of the SpaceX hangar at the base of pad 39A overnight on Thursday.
Crew Commander 2 Shane Kimbrough, co-pilot Megan McArthur, European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet and Japanese pilot Akihiko Hoshide, all space veterans, are expected to fly to the Florida spaceport on Friday afternoon to begin final launch preparations.
SpaceX engineers plan to test the first-stage Falcon 9 engines on Saturday morning and perform a countdown to rehearsals with astronauts early Sunday. Test shots and rehearsal are both timed to mimic the actual launch procedures and calendar.
GODMOTHER
Only one number remains under review for a busy weekend.
Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA’s former director of spaceflight operations and now vice president of SpaceX, recently said that engineers recently discovered that before launch, low-liquid oxygen pumps were regularly pumped into Falcon 9 first-stage tanks than they had. seama.
The difference is only a few extra inches in the charge of the supercooled oxygen tank, but engineers want to make sure they understand the discrepancy and what impact, if any, it could have on performance or safety.
Assuming a timely launch on Thursday, Crew-2 astronauts will dock at the station’s front port on Friday morning, April 23.
They will be greeted on board by Space Station Commander Shannon Walker and fellow 1st crew astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, along with Novitskiy, Dubrov and Vande Hei.
After a week-long “surrender” to familiarize their replacements with the station’s operations, the 1-crew astronauts will leave, leading the SpaceX capsule to an explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, south of Tallahassee, Florida, around 12:40 p.m. April 28.
Before leaving, Walker will hand over command of the station to Hoshide, who will be in charge over time Tokyo Summer Olympics.