Astronauts fly to the ISS after midnight

The SpaceX spacecraft and the US Aerospace and Space Administration (NASA) will try to launch the Crew-1 mission at night Sunday through Monday at 1.27 AD.During this time, the Falcon 9 rocket will carry four astronauts to the International Space Station ( ISP) in a manned Crew Dragon module.

The beginning is currently threatening time. According to the latest forecasts, there is only a 50% chance that proper weather conditions will prevail at the time of scheduled departure in Cape Canaveral in Florida and other major areas.

But hopefully, the capsule with the astronauts will connect to the ISS station on Tuesday morning, around 5am of our time.

This is a big event for the United States. At the end of May, it was the first time since 2011 that American astronauts flew into space on American rockets and from American soil. But it was still just a test. This time we are going for a pointed capsule Crew Dragon is officially certified and starting this weekend, it will regularly take full crews of astronauts into orbit for about six months in orbit.

The official annotated flight broadcast (in English) will be streamed free of charge over the Internet. It will be available on NASA and SpaceX YouTube channels. If you are interested in the mission and know English, you can watch the entire broadcast, which will start 4 hours before the start, at 9.15 our time:

The rocket will be used again by their colleagues

The four Crew Dragon astronauts, who have named the Resilience capsule, will spend approximately six months on the ISS. We will no longer see them on Earth until spring next year.

The crew consists of three NASA astronauts: Commander Michael Hopkins, pilot Victor Glover and flight specialist Shannon Walker. They will be completed by Sox Noguchi, an astronaut from the Japanese space research agency JAXA.

We crew, its history and its attractions discussed in more detail in a separate article.

The first stage of the brand new Falcon 9 rocket is disconnected from the rest of the machine about 2 minutes and 40 seconds after launch to land on a vertical platform in the Atlantic Ocean after about nine and a half minutes.

The machine will then be inspected and ready for the next flight, which will be the next manned mission on ISS – Crew-2.

The Crew Dragon capsule itself is detached from the missile carrier 12 minutes after leaving Florida. Until the ISS “catches up”, 16 Draco nozzles will be self-propelled.

They can’t just look out the window

The purpose of any expedition aboard the International Space Station is scientific research. The incoming crew will, among other things, take care of, for example, a garden with radishes. you can

“Radishes have the advantage of high nutrient content and rapid growth, which makes this plant an attractive option for future space farmers on longer missions to the Moon or Mars,” explains NASA.

There are other attempts associated with these courageous missions. For example, the cooling system of the new generation of spacesuits, which NASA is testing for the first time, will be tested presented publicly a year ago.

Another research topic will be the ability of bacteria to destroy rocks. They could be some kind of “micro miners”. “Future space explorers can use this process to extract elements from planetary surfaces and refine regolith – the type of soil found on the moon – into usable mixtures,” the agency said.

It is not uncommon for astronauts to bring some living organisms with them. This time, Drosophili and small “fruit flies” will be studied at the ISS. The astronauts will focus on their circadian rhythm, the biorhythm of our “inner clock” – the alternation of activity and sleep.

“Understanding the changes in genetic material that affect circadian rhythms under microgravity conditions can shed light on processes relevant to the functioning of an astronaut’s brain,” hopes NASA.