After an all-day review, NASA and SpaceX provisionally cleaned up a refurbishment Crew Dragon spaceship i Rocket Falcon 9 for launch next Thursday to transport a crew of three men and one woman to the International Space Station.
It will be the third manned flight into orbit from U.S. land since the shuttle was withdrawn in 2011 and the second operational flight of Crew Dragon as NASA moves away from the Russian Soyuz spacecraft’s only relay to transport astronauts to from the low orbit of the Earth.
Pending the resolution of an alleged minor technical issue, the launch of historic block 39A at the Kennedy Space Center is scheduled for 6:11 am ET on April 22, which is also Earth Day, and begins a 23-hour appointment with the space station. .
NASA / SpaceX
Meanwhile, in Kazakhstan, Russian rescue teams and NASA support personnel were deployed for the planned re-entry and landing of a Soyuz spacecraft carrying three crew members of the space station to Earth.
Soyuz MS-17 / 63S commander Sergey Ryzhikov, flight engineer Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and NASA astronaut Kate Rubins are scheduled to leave the lab complex at 9:34 p.m. ET Friday, setting a landing in the steppe of Kazakhstan at 12:56 on Saturday (10:56 local time).
The landing will come just six days after another Soyuz arrived on the space station with three new crew members: Soyuz MS-18 / 64S commander Oleg Novitskiy, flight engineer Pyotr Dubrov and astronaut the NASA Mark Vande Hey.
The two rotating flights of the Soyuz crew prepared for the launch of Thursday’s SpaceX Crew Dragon and the return to Earth of another Crew Dragon on April 28, taking home four astronauts after a 164-day stay in the space.
During a formal review of flight readiness at the Kennedy Space Center, senior executives agreed to move forward with the launch of SpaceX astronauts “Crew-2” next week and the return of the four Crew-1 station flyers they replace.
NASA / SpaceX
“This was an important milestone today, because that’s when the teams come together … and we put the seal of approval that our astronauts are sure to get on the vehicle and launch and, in the case of crew-1, come at home safely, ”said Norm Knight, deputy director of flight operations at the Johnson Space Center.
The Crew-2 Falcon 9 rocket, with the same first stage that launched the first operational mission of Crew Dragon (Crew-1), was expected to withdraw from the SpaceX hangar at the base of block 39A on Thursday night. .
Crew-2 Commander Shane Kimbrough, co-pilot Megan McArthur, European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet and Japanese pilot Akihiko Hoshide, all space veterans, are due to fly Friday afternoon at Florida spaceport to begin final preparations for launch.
SpaceX engineers plan to fire the engines of the first stage of the Falcon 9 on Saturday morning and conduct a countdown of tests with the astronauts in the early hours of Sunday. Both the test shot and the general rehearsal are reproduced to mimic the actual procedures and timing of the launch day.
NASA
There is only one number under review for a busy weekend.
Bill Gerstenmaier, former director of NASA’s spaceflight operations and now vice president of SpaceX, said engineers recently discovered that slightly more liquid oxygen propellants were routinely being pumped from space tanks before launch. first phase of what they had accomplished.
The difference is only equivalent to a few extra inches in the tank’s super-cold oxygen charge, but engineers want to make sure they understand the discrepancy and what impacts it can have, if any, on performance or safety.
Assuming a one-time launch on Thursday, Crew-2 astronauts will dock at the station port next Friday morning, April 23rd.
They will be greeted on board by the space station commander, Shannon Walker, and fellow crew 1 astronauts, Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, along with Novitskiy, Dubrov, and Vande Hei.
After a week-long “delivery” to help familiarize their substitutes with the station’s operations, crew-1 astronauts will leave, driving their SpaceX capsule to a crash in the southern Gulf of Mexico. from Tallahassee, Florida, around 12:40 pm ET on April 28th.
Before leaving, Walker will hand over command of the station to Hoshide, who will be in charge during the Tokyo Summer Olympics.