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Takeoff was originally scheduled for Saturday night local time, but NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said on Friday afternoon that high winds at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, the launch site, prompted SpaceX and NASA to push their schedule. launch on Sunday at 7:27 pm ET.
SpaceX has called to delay the launch, according to a NASA spokesperson.
It’s unclear if he has the virus yet, but Bridenstine told reporters earlier Friday that, according to NASA guidelines, Musk would need to self-isolate and SpaceX would need to plot the contract to determine who might have been exposed if Musk had the virus.
During a press briefing, SpaceX and NASA officials said they are confident that no key launch personnel are at risk of exposure.
The astronauts have already been in rigorous quarantine for two weeks, according to Norm Knight, NASA’s deputy manager of its flight operations directorate.
Three NASA astronauts – Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker – will be joined by Soichi Noguchi, an astronaut from the Japanese space agency JAXA, during the journey.
The launch time on Sunday will also depend on the weather.
But the chances of favorable conditions on Sunday seem to be even lower than on Saturday, according to the latest forecasts of the 45th Space Wing of the army, the United States Space Force team officially in charge of considering the time suitable for launch.
The latest Space Wing forecasts showed that there was a 70% chance of good condition on Saturday, but it dropped to 60% on Sunday.
Another backup launch day is scheduled for Wednesday 18 November.
This marked the first time astronauts have entered orbit aboard a private spacecraft and the first time astronauts have been launched into space from US soil in nearly a decade.
That trip, however, was still considered a “demonstration” mission and was carried out by two veteran NASA astronauts and former military test pilots.
Everything went smoothly, but NASA has not officially certified Crew Dragon as a “classified as human” spacecraft, which means it was officially deemed safe to transport people into space, until final reviews finished this week. .
This weekend’s mission, dubbed Crew-1, will really get things started.
The four astronauts are not all test pilots.
They come from a variety of backgrounds, from academia to robotic engineering, and are poised to become full-time residents once aboard the space station, where they will conduct comprehensive research, repairs and maintenance for 20 years. -old orbiting laboratory.
It is a rubber drop-shaped capsule that measures approximately 13 feet in diameter and is equipped with seven seats and touchscreen controls.
SpaceX has spent a decade developing and testing the spacecraft, which is not to be confused with SpaceX’s experimental rocket on Mars, Starship, or the company’s Dragon spacecraft, which has been flying loads of supplies to and from the space station for years. .
The Dragon crew and astronauts will enter orbit in a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and astronauts will board the vehicle on launch day using an aerial “crew access arm”.
After the rocket launches the crew dragon into the upper atmosphere, the spacecraft will separate and fire its thrusters to begin maneuvers to the space station.
The Crew Dragon capsule is completely self-contained, so astronauts will primarily need to monitor systems and keep in touch with mission control unless something goes wrong.
Crew-1 astronauts called their Crew Dragon spacecraft “Resilience” in recognition of the “global pandemic, economic hardship and civil unrest” that made 2020 a particularly challenging year, according to Hopkins.
Twenty years of the International Space Station
“We feel like it’s a connection with all of you, with everyone. We hope it makes you smile and we hope it brings something positive to your life,” Hopkins said of the name “Resilience” at a recent press conference.
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