Astronauts head to the launch site for the SpaceX flight

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) – Four astronauts arrived Sunday at Kennedy Space Center for the second SpaceX crew launch this coming weekend.

According to NASA, it marks the long-awaited start of regular crew rotations on the International Space Station, with private companies providing the elevators. There will be twice as many astronauts as the test flight earlier this year and their mission will last six full months.

Make no mistake: every flight is a test flight when it comes to space travel. But it’s also true that we should be able to travel to the International Space Station on a regular basis, “NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said, welcoming the astronauts to Kennedy.

The crew of three Americans and one Japanese will take off Saturday evening, provided the approaching tropical storm Eta does not interfere. It will be a quick trip to the space station, an express in orbit around six that lasts less than nine hours.

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The astronauts called their capsule Dragon Resilience given all the challenges of 2020: coronavirus and social isolation, protests against racial injustice and a particularly difficult election and campaign season. They were in quarantine for a week or two and took safety precautions (masks and social distancing) much earlier.

“It’s been a tough year for all of us for many different reasons,” said crew commander Mike Hopkins after arriving from Houston. “We thought that if the name of our vehicle could give some hope, a little inspiration, make people smile, then this is definitely what we wanted to do.”

All four will remain in orbit until spring, when their replacements arrive aboard another SpaceX Dragon capsule. The cargo version of the capsule will also continue to provide regular food and supplies.

SpaceX’s Benji Reed said the company plans to launch seven Dragons over the next 14 months: three for the crew and four for the cargo.

“Every time a dragon is launched, there will be two dragons in space,” said Reed, director of mission management for the crew.

Meanwhile, NASA’s other taxi service, Boeing, does not plan to fly with its first crew until next summer. The company plans a second unmanned test flight in a couple of months; the former suffered so many software problems that the Starliner capsule was unable to reach the space station.

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NASA turned to private companies for space station deliveries (cargo, then crew) following the withdrawal of the shuttle fleet in 2011. American astronauts continued to travel on Russian rockets at increasingly high prices. The latest Soyuz ticket cost NASA $ 90 million.

SpaceX finally ended NASA’s nearly decade-long drought of astronaut launches last May, successfully delivering a couple of test pilots to the space station from Kennedy for a two-month stay. The return capsule was examined by SpaceX after its crash, resulting in modifications for this second flight.

Engineers discovered excessive heat shield erosion due to scorching reentry temperatures; the company has strengthened the vulnerable section for the upcoming launch, said Hans Koenigsmann, vice president of SpaceX. Improvements were also made to the altitude measurement system for parachutes, after the parachutes were opened a little too low during the astronaut’s first flight. More recently, two Falcon rocket engines were replaced due to contamination from a red lacquer used in processing. Engine modifications delayed the flight by two weeks.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the SpaceX crew’s first flight was all the private boats full of spectators that surrounded the capsule in the Gulf of Mexico after the August crash. Koenigsmann promises a larger exclusion zone and more patrols for future returns.

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The second crew has three veteran pilots and one rookie:

Hopkins, 51, is an Air Force colonel and former space station resident who grew up on a pig and cattle farm in Missouri.

– Commander of the Navy. Victor Glover, 44, is the pilot and the only space rookie; He is from the Los Angeles area and will be the first African American astronaut to travel to the space station for an extended stay.

– Shannon Walker, 55, a physicist born and raised in Houston, has lived on the space station in the past; her husband, retired astronaut Andrew Thomas, helped build the outpost.

– Soichi Noguchi, 55, of the Japanese Space Agency, another former resident of the station, will become the first person in decades to launch three types of rockets; has already flown on a US space shuttle and a Russian Soyuz.

They will join two Russians and one American who arrived last month from the space station from Kazakhstan.

Hopkins and his crew will travel to Teslas’ launch pad – another company of SpaceX founder Elon Musk – in color-coordinated spacesuits with the spacecraft. But under all good looks there are “a lot of amazing abilities,” according to Glover.

“It is a very elegant capsule. But it has the advantage of having great advances in technology since we last built spacecraft here in this country, ”Walker said in a recent interview with the Associated Press.

Noguchi, who along with Walker joined the crew this year, is particularly excited about riding a dragon. In Japan, the dragon is an esteemed mythical creature, “almost a journey to heaven”.

“It is a great privilege to learn how to actually train the dragon, how to ride a dragon,” he said. “SpaceX did a good job teaching Dragon Rider from scratch in six months.”