SpaceX Ready To Launch NASA’s Next Astronauts On The Space Station

(CTN NEWS) – CAPE CANAVERAL – Over 72 hours after a first attempt was cancelled owing to a clogged filter in the launch system, Elon Musk’s rocket business SpaceX was prepared to try again on Thursday to launch NASA‘s upcoming long-duration crew of the International Space Station into orbit.

 

A Russian cosmonaut and an astronaut from the United Arab Emirates will join two NASA astronauts for a six-month science mission.

That includes tests on everything from managing flammable materials in microgravity to growing human cells in space.

T-6 hours until Falcon 9's launch of Crew-6 to the @space_station → https://t.co/l5PmxG9Azj pic.twitter.com/fAsREnWQWZ

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 1, 2023

The SpaceX launch vehicle, which consists of a Falcon 9 rocket atop an autonomous Crew Dragon capsule dubbed Endeavour

It was scheduled to launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 12:34 a.m. EST (0534 GMT).

SpaceX Retry Launching NASA’s Next Space Station Crew

Around 25 hours after launch, early on Friday morning, the four-person crew should arrive at the International Space Station (ISS), which orbits the Earth at a height of roughly 250 miles (420 km).

Launch teams discovered a problem with the flow of engine-ignition fluid required to fire the rocket’s main thrusters on Monday, and less than three minutes before liftoff.

The first attempt to propel the astronauts into space was aborted. According to NASA, the problem was fixed by swapping out a clogged filter and cleaning the system.

According to NASA, the mission was “go” for launch on Wednesday, with a 95% likelihood of acceptable weather.

According to SpaceX, “all systems are looking excellent for launch,” though workers were monitoring the weather along the spacecraft’s ascent path.

On this mission, known as Crew 6, NASA will launch its sixth long-term ISS crew aboard SpaceX since Elon Musk founded the commercial rocket company.

The billionaire CEO of electric car manufacturer Tesla Inc. and social media platform Twitter, began launching American astronauts into orbit in May 2020.

Mission commander Stephen Bowen, 59, a veteran of three space shuttle trips and seven spacewalks, is in charge of the newest ISS crew. He was a submarine officer in the U.S. Navy and has spent more than 40 days in orbit.

As the pilot of Crew 6, fellow NASA astronaut Warren “Woody” Hoburg, 37, a commercial pilot and engineer, will make his maiden spaceflight.

Sultan Alneyadi, a 41-year-old astronaut from the United Arab Emirates, is part of Crew 6, making him famous as the first crew to launch from American territory and the second person from his nation to travel to space overall.

Andrei Fedyaev, a 42-year-old Russian cosmonaut who, like Alneyadi, is an engineer and a spaceflight novice and serves as the crew’s mission specialist, completes the four-person Crew 6.

Fedyaev is the most recent cosmonaut to travel on an American spacecraft as a result of a ride-sharing agreement that NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos inked in July.

Despite the escalating hostilities between Washington and Moscow over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Seven current ISS residents will greet the Crew 6 team upon their arrival: three U.S. NASA crew members, including commander Nicole Aunapu Mann, the first Native American woman to travel to space, three Russians, and a Japanese astronaut.

A U.S.-Russian cooperation that also includes Canada, Japan, and 11 European nations has been running the International Space Station (ISS).

The largest man-made object in space that is about the length of a football field, for more than 20 years.

The outpost was partly designed as a project to enhance ties between Washington and Moscow following the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of Cold War rivalry that sparked the initial U.S.-Soviet space race in the 1950s and 1960s.

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