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| Image credit: SpaceX |
SpaceX and NASA are formally "go" to proceed with launching 4 astronauts to the International Space Station subsequent week, with the completion of a essential flight readiness assessment on Thursday (April 15).
The Crew-2 mission is scheduled to raise off subsequent Thursday (April 22), which additionally occurs to be Earth Day. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft will launch from historical Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It will be the 2nd flight of this specific Crew Dragon; the identical capsule, named "Endeavour," carried NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to and from the area station final 12 months for the Demo-2 take a look at flight.
Inside the Crew Dragon will be 4 Expedition sixty five crewmembers, who will spend about six months in space: NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas Pesquet.
"The flight readiness assessment used to be very successful; we solely had one exception," Kathy Lueders, NASA's head of human spaceflight, stated in a information convention Thursday. "It desires to be cleared up in the subsequent few days due to the fact it is received to get resolved earlier than the static furnace [test]," which is presently scheduled for Saturday (April 17), she added. (Static fires, in which rocket engines are ignited whilst the automobile stays anchored to the ground, are a frequent pre-flight checkout.)
Bill Gerstenmaier, vice president of construct and flight reliability at SpaceX (and former NASA human spaceflight chief), stated in the equal information convention that the groups "discovered there used to be a achievable loading error, the place we may additionally absolutely be loading a little more oxygen in our [Falcon 9] tanks." SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets use liquid oxygen and rocket-grade kerosene for propellant.
Gerstenmaier introduced that different Falcon 9 missions have been flying correctly in this identical configuration, however SpaceX solely lately observed the problem whilst trying out the rocket on the floor in Texas. The organization detected barely greater degrees of liquid oxygen than expected, however they have now not but figured out the reason of this discrepancy.
"We reviewed that with the NASA group today, however we did not have sufficient time to virtually go over all the statistics and appear at all the penalties of what that ought to mean," he said. "We're going to take the more step" to evaluation the problem and decide if it may want to pose a chance to the astronauts (or different future Falcon 9 launches).
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| Image credit: Kim Shiflett/NASA |
If the liquid oxygen trouble is resolved as predicted and all else goes in accordance to plan, Crew-2 will raise off at 6:11 a.m. EDT (1011 GMT) on April 22 and dock with the International Space Station simply over 23 hours later, at 5:30 a.m. EDT (0930 GMT) on April 23. A remaining launch readiness assessment is scheduled for April 20.
A backup launch window is handy on April 23. After that, Crew-2 may want to launch on both April 26 or April 27, Steve Stich, NASA's Commercial Crew Program manager, introduced in the information conference.
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