CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. NASA’s next crew of astronauts is ready to snap into a SpaceX Dragon capsule and blow space.
The four astronauts are scheduled to go to the International Space Station (ISS) on SpaceX’s next crew mission Thursday (April 22) at 06:11 EST (1011 GMT). They rehearsed that launch day today (April 18) with a final dress rehearsal.
The spacecraft – NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, France’s Thomas Pesquet and Japanese Akihiko Hoshide – arrived at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida on Friday (April 16) and had already begun their final preparations before setting off, which included a quick conversation with space crew reporters.
“It’s great to be here at the Kennedy Space Center,” Crew-2 mission commander Kimbrough said during the conversation. “We were already training this morning, yesterday we had to go to the road to see the rocket and our spacecraft, which is very exciting for us.”
“It’s great to be here,” McArthur added. “We’m excited and ready to go.”
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The Crew-2 mission will see a veteran SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket being refurbished Crew dragon spacecraft on a 23-hour ride to the space station. Removal is on Thursday (1011 GMT) from 06:11 EDT from KSC’s historic Road 39A. If all goes according to plan, the Crew Dragon – named Endeavor by the previous crew – will arrive at the ISS on Friday around 05:30 EDT (0930 GMT).
Their ride around the orbit will be the first time the crew does not drive to space on a shiny new Falcon 9 rocket; their booster, which rolled to the road on Friday morning (April 16) for a planned static fire test on Saturday (April 17), flew for the first time in November when it landed the Crew-1 crew in space.
Crew-2 is the second operational, contracted mission launched as part of NASA’s commercial crew program. Kimbrough, McArthur, Pesquet and Hoshide will remain on board the space station for six months.
“I just want to say a little thank you to the people who get us here, who get us ready and get it all ready to make it happen,” said Crew-2 pilot Megan McArthur. “It’s a huge number of people, including our families, who are naturally sacrificing while we prepare.”
“And I really want to take every opportunity to say thank you because we know how much work it takes and we really appreciate it,” she added.
Astronaut flair
McArthur has been getting excited lately for her sparkling taste in shoes. When she arrives at the Kennedy Space Center, she is wearing her typical astronaut blues, along with a pair of silver glittering boots. Asked if she could comment on this, McArthur said: “I do not know if I can explain it, but I can show it again.”
“They are quite awesome,” Pesquet, her crew, said Friday after the crew arrived. “There was talk of all of us wearing it, but for some reason she was chosen.”
McArthur said the boots provide her joy.
“I think it was a tough year for everyone, and I decided I needed a little extra sparkle,” she said. “It’s just nice to wear it.”
But it’s not the only flair McArthur wears – a special patch that only adorns a few astronauts in her jacket. McArthur said she earned it during her commute to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.
“Hubble is in a different orbit than the space station, so to get there, you have to drive faster when the main engine is off (MECO) than you would with a typical mission,” McArthur explained. “So our commander had these patches made for us when we got home.”
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A Earth Day launch
Crew-2 is expected to launch on April 22, which happens to be Earth Day.
‘It means a lot to us [to launch on Earth day] because we all care about the earth individually, but also because our agencies are at the forefront of the fight to protect the environment, ”Pesquet said when asked how he felt about leaving the planet on Earth.
“It was only by entering space that we were able to take a step back and really measure all the variables that enable scientists to determine what is happening to the planet,” he said.
Pesquet says they are all part of the global effort to understand climate change and how humanity is affecting the planet as astronauts. Thanks to the research done in space, NASA and its partners can better assess the health of the planet and try to make it better, as the slogan says: ‘from the earth, for the earth’.
This is a phrase McArthur says she thinks of when she leaves the planet. “When we go to space, we do incredible work for everyone here on earth,” she said. “So it’s really special and humble to be a part of something that’s going to help people and all of humanity.”
“I think it’s a wonderful symbol that we’re introducing on Earth Day,” Pesquet added.
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Dragon training
This is the third overall crew flight of a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, and as such, the current crew has learned something or two from its previous kites. McArthur’s husband and fellow astronaut Bob Behnken was one of the first two astronauts to fly on the Dragon and helped SpaceX develop the vehicle for several years before coming off the ground.
She explained that her husband, Bob, flew the Crew Dragon last year as part of the demonstration mission and happened to be in the same seat she would be in. When asked about advice he may have offered her, she said that ‘he shared a little thing along the way, [about the vehicle], but no one has specific advice. ‘
“I did learn a few years what he had on the road when they developed the vehicle,” she said. “And when I went through training, I really had a framework to post some of the information.”
The previous crews happened to mention what the dragon and the falcon sound like when they climb around the track, and that’s one of the things Kimbrough and Hoshide look forward to during the launch.
“For Shane and I, this is going to be our third spacecraft to leave Earth,” Hoshide said. “We look forward to the rumble and the G-forces pressing on our breasts.”
“It’s going to be a lot of fun,” he added.
“It’s very comforting to know what it sounds like to expect when you go through a very dynamic phase,” Kimbrough said.
He explained that after each mission, the teams at NASA and SpaceX are able to streamline the training process more and more thanks to learned lessons and feedback on astronauts. “We are really the first crew to have a fluent training, even though two others walked in front of us,” he said. “So we had a little less than a year of training, while the crew members before us had a few years of training.”
“I think it’s in a good place right now and we’ll just continue to be refined as we continue with future missions.”
Start traditions
McArthur and the crew explained that they will continue the tradition of choosing a special zero-g indicator that will be used to indicate when the crew officially reached space while climbing around the track.
On SpaceX’s unmanned Demo-1 flight to the space station, which launched in March 2019, SpaceX launched a soft earth toys in the Dragon cabin so mission controllers could see when the craft reached space. (The soft Earth started floating around the cabin when it happened.) On Demo-2, Hurley and Behnken let their young boys choose the indication.
The boys have a pink and blue sequin dinosaur, while the Crew-1 crew chose a soft baby yoda. Asked what the indicator would be this time around and whether McArthur’s son could choose a second toy, McArthur said that “our crew will have a zero-G indicator that we chose together.”
“We all have boys and girls who are part of this mission,” she said, “so our families have chosen an indication that you will see as soon as we reach zero-G.”
Unlike crews in Russia that have their own traditions, and that do not really include rocket viewing, the Crew-2 astronauts could continue the tradition of SpaceX to take crew members to see their rocket before launch day.
“We got in here by plane and we had to fly the road and see how our rocket was ready to go,” McArthur said. “There’s really nothing like looking out the window and seeing how a spaceship gets prepared and realizing that you’re going to ride on it in a few days.”
“It’s a wonderful feeling,” she said.
After a quick chat with the media after getting off the plane, the four astronauts were treated to a close and personal view of their rocket.
“When we pulled the rocket, we giggled,” Kimbrough told Space.com, “I think we could not all believe it was our rocket.”
He said that when they arrived at the road, the rocket was not completely vertical and that they were able to watch the rocket go vertically on the launch pad. “It was really neat to see it go from halfway up, to the vertical position, and then see the crew’s access arm swing,” Kimbrough said. “It was quite special.”
“It looks fantastic,” Hoshide said. “We’re looking forward to really riding it and flying on it.”
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