The space agency said the next launch window for a NASA crew to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX rocket had been pushed back for at least two more days, until no earlier than April 22.
SpaceX, the private rocket company of billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, was to carry its second ‘operational’ space station team into orbit for NASA earlier in late March. But NASA announced in January that the target date had slipped to April 20.
The schedule is being re-adjusted based on the available flight times to the space station, powered by orbit mechanics, which will minimize the astronauts’ need for sleep shifts, NASA spokesman Dan Huot said Monday.
The flight is only the second full-fledged space station crew rotation mission launched aboard a privately owned spacecraft – a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon capsule that will carry it in orbit.
The four-member SpaceX Crew-2 consists of two NASA astronauts, Mission Commander Shane Kimbrough and pilot Megan McArthur, along with Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and fellow European Space Agency mission co-mission specialist Thomas Pesquet.
After docking at the space station, they will join the four SpaceX Crew-1 astronauts who arrived in November, and cosmonauts carried to orbit aboard a Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft.
The newly arrived Crew-2 will remain in orbit for six months, while Crew-1 will return to Earth in early May.
McArthur becomes the second person from her family to ride into space with a Crew Dragon. Her husband, Bob Behnken, was one of two NASA astronauts at the first manned Crew Dragon launch, a test flight last August that marked NASA’s first human orbit from US soil in nine years, after the end of the spacecraft program in 2011. .
In a time of misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more important than ever.
If you sign up, you can help us get the story right.
JOIN NOW
PHOTO GALLERY (CLICK TO ENLARGE)
