Preparations for the planned lifting Thursday of a SpaceX Dragon capsule with a crew of four to the International Space Station, got ready again at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday, but officials are monitoring the marginal wind and sea conditions in rounded abortion zones in the Atlantic that could force a delay in launch.
There were no significant technical issues in the way of the launch Thursday, giving NASA and SpaceX officials a chance to continue their flight lead at the end of a Launch Readiness Review early Tuesday.
The takeoff of the Crew Dragon Endeavor spacecraft on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is Thursday at 06:11:35 EDT (1011: 35 GMT) from Route 39A in NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
This will be the first time astronauts have been launched on a Falcon 9 rocket powered by a leading fly booster, and the first reuse of a Crew Dragon spacecraft. The mission, known as Crew-2, is the third SpaceX flight with overall astronauts.
The astronauts and NASA executives are comfortable with SpaceX’s reuse plan. The company has successfully flown 57 missions with recycled Falcon boosters.
The Launch Readiness Review early Tuesday was the last major meeting to clear the Crew-2 mission for the uplift Thursday.
“Safety came first in all these reviews, and that’s how it should be,” said Norm Knight, deputy director of aviation operations at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. This business of human spaceflight is unforgivable. It is the vigilance of the teams that guarantees continued safety, and it was certainly present in these reviews this week. ”
NASA executives cleared up a prior technical concern related to the loading of liquid oxygen fuel in the first phase of its Falcon 9 rocket.
SpaceX recently discovered during a ground test in Texas that it filled the oxidizer tank with a super-cold liquid oxygen tank. An company official said last week that it appears that through the Falcon 9’s flying history, SpaceX has loaded more liquid oxygen into the rocket, which has included more than 100 missions since 2010.
Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, said an analysis showed that the Falcon 9 rocket could be used well without changing SpaceX’s loading procedures.
“We concluded that the amount of liquid oxygen in the first phase was very good within the guidance of the navigation and control analysis, and performance analysis, within the load and structural capability of the vehicle,” Stitch said on Tuesday. said a press conference.
Engineers have also shown that the Falcon 9 rocket can handle abortions and other situations with the extra liquid oxygen on board.
“So we are going to continue with the amount of LOX (liquid oxygen) on the vehicle,” Stich said.
The only concern the officers noticed Tuesday was about the weather and sea conditions along the Falcon 9 rocket’s flight corridor northeast of Cape Canaveral. Officials are monitoring the wind, sea conditions and lightning in the areas where the Crew Dragon capsule could splash in case of an emergency during the flight.
The weather forecast for the launch site in Florida looks good, with an 80% chance of acceptable conditions for removal on Thursday. There’s a 90% chance of good weather in the Kennedy Space Center for a backup launch Friday at 05:49 EDT (0949 GMT).
The forecast for abortion zones in the Atlantic is ‘a little harder’, Stich said. Forecast models show that some areas along the Falcon 9’s flight path may have strong winds later this week.
“Of the two days, now, I would say Friday looks a little better than Thursday,” Stich said. “We will keep an eye on the weather.”
There is also a “moderate” risk that winds at the upper level over the Florida launch site on Thursday morning could exceed the limit of the Falcon 9 rocket, according to the official forecast issued by the U.S. military’s 45th weather address.
NASA and SpaceX officials will meet again Wednesday to reevaluate the weather forecast and decide when they will make a final decision early Thursday to continue counting down the start of the launch.
Assuming it launches on time on Thursday, the Falcon 9 rocket will release the Crew Dragon Endeavor spacecraft into orbit about 12 minutes after takeoff. An automated series of push-ups will lead the capsule to the dock at the space station on Friday at 05:30 EDT (0930 GMT).
If the launch is delayed until Friday, the docking will slide until Saturday.
NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough, the Crew-2 spacecraft commander, said he and his crew would ride with the Dragon spacecraft if all went according to plan.
“The spacecraft is a futuristic spacecraft, and it can do it all,” he told a news conference last month.
All four of the Crew-2 astronauts are veterans of previous space missions. Kimbrough and Japanese mission specialist Akihiko Hoshide each flew a spacecraft and a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. NASA pilot Megan McArthur and European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet flew one spacecraft and one Soyuz mission, respectively.
“The technology is very different (than the shuttle and Soyuz),” said Kimbrough, a 53-year-old retired U.S. colonel and Apache helicopter pilot. ‘We do touch screens instead of a joystick in your hand to make the thing fly … Megan and I are trained to take over manually during any phase of the flight, if necessary, but hopefully we’ll just be together to drive and enjoy it. ”
This is the first visit to the space station for McArthur (49), who was selected as an astronaut in 2000 and flew with the spacecraft Atlantis during the last service mission to the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009.
She compares the 13-day flight to the spacecraft with a business trip. Now she is actually moving to a new home.
McArthur’s husband, astronaut Bob Behnken, flew on the first mission of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavor capsule last year. She will sit the same in the revamped and upgraded spaceship.
The Crew-2 astronauts are scheduled to return to Earth in late October for an outing 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 as commander of the space station. He said the automation of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft makes the vehicle safer.
“What this 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 and recorded 196 days in orbit during his first space mission. ‘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. ”
The Crew-2 astronauts will support more than 200 research experiments on the space station, conduct space walks to maintain and upgrade the more than 20-year-old complex, and help demonstrate new technologies for missions to the moon.
The arrival of the Crew-2 astronauts will temporarily increase the space station’s crew size to 11 people, including three newly arrived residents who flew to the outpost with a Russian Soyuz spacecraft earlier this month. With the return of the Crew-1 astronauts on April 28, the space station staff will return to its long-term level of seven crew members.
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