NASA has given SpaceX the green light to transport four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) next week after completing a formal flight readiness review. Lifting will take place as scheduled for April 22 at 6:11 a.m. ET at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The upcoming launch of Crew Dragon is especially a few firsts for space company Elon Musk. According to this, this is not just the first crew flight using a recycled Falcon and Dragon craft Phys.org, but it is also the first with two international partners. The Falcon 9 rocket contains the same first phase that astronauts launched into the ISS in November, while the capsule (called Endeavor) transported NASA’s Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley to and from the space station last year.
Both are reusable and form part of the larger SpaceX range of spacecraft. The Falcon 9 is a two-stage rocket designed to transport payloads and crews of spacecraft in orbit. It has the same Merlin engine as the larger Falcon Heavy and has been used in a total of 122 launches. While the dragon is a capsule equipped with 16 Draco propellers for movements in an orbit and several parachutes for re-entry and landing.
The mission astronauts this time include Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, along with Akihiko Hoshide, the Japanese Aviation Agency, and Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency. They will spend six months aboard the ISS and replace the four Crew-1 members returning home.
All that remains is to solve a small problem before the targeted launch. Bill Gerstenmaier, director of SpaceX, said the company noticed that slightly more liquid oxygen fuel was being pumped into tanks in the first phase than they realized. Engineers are currently ensuring that the inequality poses no safety hazards. If the problem is resolved as planned, astronauts should turn off according to schedule and pick up at the station on the morning of April 23rd. You will be able to watch the launch live on NASA TV.
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