SpaceX NASA is officially “rolling” to go ahead with launching four astronauts to the International Space Station next week, with the completion of the Critical Readiness Review Thursday (April 15).
The Crew-2 mission is scheduled to launch next Thursday (April 22), which will happen, too Earth day. UNO SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket The Crew Dragon spacecraft will take off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Pad 39A in Florida. It will be the second flight set for this Crew Dragon. The same capsule is calledChasingNASA astronauts transported Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to and from the space station last year for the DIMO-2 test flight.
Inside Crew Dragon, there will be four of the mission’s 65 crew members, who will spend about six months in space: NASA astronauts Shane Kimbro and Megan MacArthur, Japan’s space agency (JAXA) astronaut Akihiko Hoshid, and European astronaut Thomas Pesquet. .
Related: NASA’s SpaceX Crew-2 astronaut mission: Real-time updates
“We had only one exception,” the flight preparation review was very successful; “We had only one exception,” said Cathy Luders, head of NASA’s Human Space Flight, at a press conference on Thursday. “It should be removed in the next few days because it needs to be fixed before the continuous fire. [test], Which is currently scheduled for Saturday (April 17). (Fixed fires, in which rocket engines ignite while the aircraft remains anchored to the ground, are common prior to flight.)
Bill Gerstenmeier SpaceX’s vice president of aviation construction and reliability (and former head of human spaceflight at NASA), said at the same press conference that the teams “discovered a potential upload error, because we might actually be loading some” more oxygen in our area. ” [Falcon 9] SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets use liquid oxygen and kerosene, which are used to make fuels.
Gerstenmeier added that the other Falcon 9 missions were successfully flying with the same setup, but SpaceX only recently discovered the problem while testing a ground-to-surface missile in Texas. The company detected liquid oxygen levels slightly higher than expected, but it did not yet know the cause of the discrepancy.
He said, “We looked at it today with the NASA team, but we did not have time to review all the data and look at all the implications of what it could mean.” We will go further to investigate the problem and determine if it could pose a threat to astronauts (or operations). Other future Falcon 9 launches).
If the liquid oxygen problem is resolved as planned and goes according to plan, Crew-2 will take off at 6:11 AM ET (1011 GMT) April 22 and land on the International Space Station just 23 hours later, at 5: 00 AM ET (0930 GMT) on April 23. A final review to prepare for the launch is scheduled for April 20.
A backup startup window is available on April 23rd. After that, Crew-2 could be launched on April 26 or April 27, NASA Commercial Crew Program Director Steve Stitch added at the press conference.
He can Watch the Crew-2 mission live here on Space.comCourtesy of NASA TV.
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