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NASA’s Shannon Walker, Victor Glover, and Michael Hopkins will join JAXA’s Soichi Noguchi in the SpaceX Crew Dragon’s first Crew-1 operational flight.
NASA
This is no longer a test. SpaceX is trying to get astronauts on the International Space Station to transfer a normal part of NASA’s operations with the Crew mission 1 – his first crew rotation flight – Sunday 15 November. The launch, originally scheduled for Saturday, was rejected due to winds on the ground and potential problems with recovery operations.
SpaceX is revolutionary The Demo-2 mission delivered two NASA astronauts safely to the ISS in May. It was both heartbreaking and exciting when real humans tested Crew Dragon for the first time. Crew-1 will follow in the footsteps of that successful mission with a launch on a Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine tweeted the news of the launch delay on Fridays. The weather must be good not only at the launch site, but also in the water where the astronauts would land in the event of a launch emergency.
Update: Due to onshore winds and recovery operations, @NASA is @SpaceX are targeting the launch of the Crew-1 mission with astronauts in @ Space Station at 7:27 pm EST on Sunday, November 15th. The first stage booster will be reused to fly astronauts onto crew-2. #LaunchAmerica
– Jim Bridenstine (@JimBridenstine) November 13, 2020
Crew-1 will transport NASA’s Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, plus Japanese space agency JAXA’s Soichi Noguchi, to the station for a six-month stay. The crew called the spacecraft “Resilience”.
On Sunday, NASA will stream the launch and provide ongoing coverage of the mission, including the docking, hatch opening and welcome ceremony. Takeoff is scheduled for 4:27 PM PT, although coverage will begin earlier.
The launch had already been rejected from an earlier date due to a technical problem with some Falcon 9 rocket engines during a previous launch attempt for a US Space Force GPS satellite mission.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk said he may have COVID-19 on Friday, but there is still no indication if this could impact the launch of the Crew Dragon. The astronauts were quarantined before launch.
NASA announced the Crew Dragon as “the first new crew spacecraft to be certified by NASA for regular flights with astronauts from the space shuttle nearly 40 years ago” in a statement on Tuesday. SpaceX tweeted dramatic photos shows Crew Dragon and Falcon 9 upright on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center earlier in the week.
SpaceX and Boeing are NASA partners in the agency Commercial crew program, an effort to bring astronaut launches back to the ISS on US soil after years of reliance on Russian spacecraft. Crew-1 is a pivotal moment in this process.
For more information on Crew-1, here’s everything you need to know.
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