After completing a dress rehearsal for the launch day over the weekend, the four astronauts who will be on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Thursday are getting ready for a good mood and spending time with their families in Florida before heading to the planet for six months left.
Forecasters with the U.S. Army Squadron’s Squadron predict an 80% chance of acceptable weather for launch at 6:11 a.m. EDT (1011 GMT) Thursday from Route 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The four astronauts, led by NASA veteran commander Shane Kimbrough, will fly to the International Space Station in a Crew Dragon capsule.
Kimbrough and NASA’s crew members Megan McArthur, Japan’s Akihiko Hoshide and France’s Thomas Pesquet – all with space experience – fitted into their SpaceX print clothes early Sunday and drove in Tesla Model X SUVs from crew quarters at Kennedy to Route 39A. The astronauts used the same timeline as they would follow on launch day and departed shortly after 3am EDT (0700 GMT) in their storage room in the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building.
They arrived at the launch pad less than half an hour later to climb on the Crew Dragon Endeavor spacecraft on top of the 215-foot (65-meter) Falcon 9 rocket. They then boarded after simulating a scrubbed launch attempt, and returned to the crew quarters for a booking before sunrise on Sunday.
The ‘dry dress rehearsal’ was a training run for the astronauts and SpaceX support teams that will help the crew members put on the Dragon capsule.
Pesquet, an astronaut in the European Space Agency, said on Monday that everything was in order on Thursday. The mission will be the second regular rotational flight of space station personnel by SpaceX under a $ 1 million contract with NASA, which also arranges trips to the complex for European, Japanese and Canadian astronauts.
“We are giving the finishing touches to the training,” Pesquet said Monday morning. “There are only three days left before the launch, a little less. Everything is going well. The rocket is ready. The spacecraft is ready. ”
‘We actually had a few days’ margin that we did not need in the end. “Now the rocket will only be on the launch platform today and tomorrow, before the final preparation on Wednesday and then on Thursday we are ready to start,” said Pesquet. He spent 196 days in orbit on a previous trip to the space station. “The crew is happy. The crew is in good condition, uplifted. The families are here at the Cape, and everything is fine. We try to enjoy our last few days on earth before leaving the planet for six months. ”
The Dragon astronauts are scheduled to return to Earth at the end of October for a getaway off the coast of Florida.
Hoshide will take over as commander of the crew of the space station Expedition 65 next week, accepting the helm of NASA astronaut Shannon Walker. Walker and her crew – Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi – will return to Earth on April 28 with their Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft and complete a mission launched in November.
Later this year, Pesquet will get a turn with the space station commander. Pesquet worked as a spacecraft engineer in European industry and for the French space agency, and then became an airline pilot for Air France before being selected as an ESA astronaut in 2009.
With its first spaceflight, Pesquet launched and landed a Russian Soyuz capsule, with a design rooted in the 1960s. He told reporters on Monday that he expected a similar ride during the launch on the Falcon 9 rocket, which burns the same kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants as Russia’s venerable Soyuz launcher.
The Crew-2 mission is the first time SpaceX has used a reused booster and Crew Dragon spacecraft for a space mission.
“I do not expect it to be bad at all,” Pesquet said. ‘Everyone who has flown on the Dragon and Falcon 9 has loved it so far. The return to Earth is always a bit rough, but it’s the same in every spacecraft. ‘
He said the automation of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft makes the vehicle safer. Under normal conditions, the capsule flies on the steering gear to and from the space station.
“What it means for us is that we do not have to take so many actions in a nominal situation,” Pesquet said. He was an instructor in the cockpit protocol for Air France. ‘Of course we have to act in a non-nominal situation. But what this means is that you are available to manage the situation. Your situational awareness is just incredible.
“You have these big big screens that show you in every possible way what’s going on,” Pesquet said. ‘The priority of the information has already been analyzed in advance by the system. The color coding is great. The way the information is set out is just fantastic. You always know what’s going on.
“Soyuz is incredibly reliable, but you had to make sense of all the information that is sparse and scattered in every corner of your control panel, with digital meters and analog meters,” Pesquet said. ‘That’s why the training was so long. I think it’s great. We’ll love it, and I think it’s making the system more reliable overall. ”
While forecasters predict good conditions at the Florida launch site early Thursday, officials may need to monitor the Atlantic weather rule.
There is a ‘moderate’ risk of adverse conditions in the fall series landing zone of the Falcon 9 booster in the Atlantic Ocean – about east of South Carolina – and a low probability of unfavorable upper windings over the launch pad. SpaceX and NASA officials will continue evaluating wind regions and sea states at locations across the Atlantic to determine if conditions are acceptable for the dragon capsule’s extravagance in the event of a flight disruption.
“A wet and unstable pattern will continue across Central Florida as a border across the area continues to tighten,” the weather team wrote Monday morning in the forecast. ‘Rain showers and isolated thunderstorms are likely because the lowest pressure waves are moving over the next two days.
‘On Wednesday high pressure starts to build in and the restless weather pushes south through the day. By Thursday morning, the high pressure will be centered near Arkansas, which will cause windy north winds along the space coast due to the pressure gradient between the high and the departure border, ‘the foresters wrote.
“The biggest weather concern Thursday morning is these windy winds that are accompanied by this strong pressure gradient.”
With the launch period on Thursday, forecasters expect north-northeast winds of 17 to 22 km / h, a temperature of about 68 degrees Fahrenheit and a few low-level clouds.
There is also an 80% chance of good weather for a chance to launch a backup launch on Friday at 05:49 EDT (0949 GMT).
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