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The four astronauts preparing to ride SpaceX’s Crew Dragon “Resilience” into orbit boarded their spaceship Thursday at Kennedy Space Center in a test run for a launch to the International Space Station scheduled for Saturday night.
Meanwhile, NASA and SpaceX executives have tracked below-range weather and sea conditions that could cause problems for the recovery of the reusable first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket or Crew Dragon itself in the event of an in-flight emergency.
NASA Commander Mike Hopkins, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Shannon Walker, and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi donned their black and white flight suits on Thursday and drove inside Tesla SUVs from the crew quarters at the Falcon 9 Sea Launch Complex.
They climbed the launch tower with an elevator, crossed the crew access arm and entered their Crew Dragon spacecraft on top of the 63-meter-tall Falcon 9 launcher. A couple of hours later, the astronauts exited the capsule and returned to the crew quarters inside the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building in Kennedy.
Engineers went on to evaluate data from a test launch of the Falcon 9 rocket on Wednesday before a Launch Readiness Review on Friday, during which SpaceX and NASA officials will decide whether to proceed with a launch attempt on Saturday at 7:49 PM EST (0049 GMT Sunday).
Kathy Lueders, associate administrator of NASA’s mission directorate for human exploration and operations, said Thursday that there were no significant technical issues under discussion that led to the Launch Readiness Review.
“We are obviously watching the weather,” Lueders said in an interview with Spaceflight Now. “Time is a big deal, time for multiple areas.”
Tropical Storm Eta moved across Florida’s northern peninsula on Thursday and was expected to head northeast into the Atlantic Ocean. By Saturday, the remnants of the cyclone are expected to be east of the Canadian maritime provinces.
The Falcon 9 rocket will head northeast from the Florida Space Coast to align with the space station’s orbital course.
Mission leaders will monitor winds, wave conditions, lightning and rainfall in more than 50 locations in the Atlantic Ocean off the east coast of the United States, east of Canada and just west of Ireland. The Crew Dragon capsule could break and splash in those areas if the launch failed, and rescue teams would be sent to retrieve the astronauts.
A weather forecast released Thursday for the Falcon 9 launch opportunity on Saturday evening shows a 70% chance of favorable conditions for takeoff at the Florida spaceport. The main weather problem is with cumulus clouds, according to the US Space Force’s 45th Meteorological Squadron.
The forecast does not take into account wind and wave conditions along the Crew Dragon spacecraft’s ascent corridor across the Atlantic, nor the higher level wind criteria for the Falcon 9’s ascent through the atmosphere.
Lueders said SpaceX and NASA officials are also monitoring the process of the football field-sized drone ship that will be used for the landing of the Falcon 9’s first booster stage.
“The drone ship we need for the first stage landing actually left today,” Lueders told Spaceflight Now. “And with the way the seas are and the way Eta is, we’re looking at how fast that drone ship can distinguish it … So we’ll talk about it again tomorrow in our Launch Readiness Review, where is it? be organized in time to be able to launch on Saturday? “
The launch on Saturday night will kick off the Crew-1 mission, the first “operational” flight of astronauts on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft. Hopkins and his crewmates will spend six months living and working on the International Space Station, before returning to Earth with the Crew Dragon for a parachute-assisted dive into the sea.
The next launch of Crew Dragon, tentatively scheduled for March 30, 2021, with a new crew of four from the space station, will use the same reusable Falcon 9 booster with the Crew-1 mission.
“Obviously, the landing time for the first leg is a big deal,” Lueders said. “This is the stage we’re going to use for Crew-2, so it matters to us. Not that we never care, but this is an important step. “
Lueders said NASA has a spare rocket available for Crew-2 launch in case SpaceX is unable to land the Falcon 9 booster on the Crew-1 mission. If there is a problem with the recovery of the Crew-1 rocket, NASA is looking to launch the Crew-2 mission with the Falcon 9 booster scheduled for launch of the Michael Freilich Sentinel-6 oceanographic satellite later this month from California. Lueders said.
“We have a backup in case something happens at this particular stage, but we have done all our inspections on this stage,” Lueders said. “We have done all the work. We understand the hardware. So we’d really like to use it because it makes Crew-2’s job easier.
“One of the things we’re looking at is using the Sentinel-6 booster because it’s a booster we’ve seen too,” Lueders said. “He must have had a flight on it. But … there are a couple of others out there. The great thing about SpaceX is that there is a range of hardware out there that we can use. “
SpaceX’s ‘Just Read Instructions’ drone ship left Port Canaveral on Thursday, heading for a location a few hundred miles northeast of Cape Canaveral.
“The second place we care about time … is launch time,” Lueders said Thursday. “So we have to look at the weather along the break path, so we’ll go through all of those when we go through our review of launch readiness tomorrow, and then we’ll look at whether we go for day one, following a path to target a Saturday night launch or if we go to Sunday. “
A backup launch opportunity is available at 7:27 pm EST on Sunday (0027 GMT on Monday).
Once launch has taken place, the Crew Dragon will fly an automated rendezvous profile to connect with the space station, where Hopkins and his crewmates will join three other crew members who currently live and work on the space station.
NASA officials officially certified SpaceX to fly astronauts during a two-day flight readiness review Monday and Tuesday, concluding a decade-long effort to design, develop, and test the Crew Dragon spacecraft, the Falcon 9 rocket at human speed. and validate the terrain of SpaceX systems.
The test program was capped off with the test flight of a Crew Dragon capsule earlier this year with NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken on board.
SpaceX launched the Falcon 9 rocket on Wednesday afternoon on Pad 39A, a day later than planned. SpaceX lowered the rocket to pad 39A to replace the second stage bleed system components.
Lueders said NASA and SpaceX rejected the Launch Readiness Review a day after the Falcon 9 test launch delay.
“So with this move from Tuesday to Wednesday, we decided to move the LRR to Friday to make sure the team still has a couple of days to go through the data and make sure we’re ready to go,” Lueders said.
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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @ StephenClark1.
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