After completing a dress rehearsal for launch day at the weekend, the four astronauts preparing for launch Thursday on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket have been resurrected and are spending time with their families in Florida before leaving the planet for six. months.
Forecasters from the US Space Force’s 45th Weather Squadron predict an 80% chance of acceptable weather for launch at 6:11 a.m. EDT (1011 GMT) Thursday from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The four astronauts, led by veteran NASA commander Shane Kimbrough, fly to the International Space Station in a Crew Dragon capsule.
Kimbrough and NASA crewmember Megan McArthur, Akihiko Hoshide from Japan, and Thomas Pesquet from France – all with spaceflight experience – dressed in their SpaceX press suits early Sunday and drove Tesla Model X SUVs from crew quarters at Kennedy to pad 39A. Using the same timeline they will follow on launch day, the astronauts left their costume room in the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building shortly before 3 a.m. EDT (0700 GMT).
They arrived at the launch pad less than half an hour later to board the Crew Dragon Endeavor spacecraft atop the 65-meter Falcon 9 rocket. They then disembarked after simulating a scrubbed launch attempt and returned to the crew quarters for a pre-dawn debriefing on Sunday.
The “dry dress rehearsal” was a practice run for the astronauts and SpaceX support teams who will assist crew members in dressing and securing the Dragon capsule.
Pesquet, a French-born astronaut with the European Space Agency, said on Monday that everything was on track for Thursday’s launch. The mission will be the second regular rotational flight of the space station crew by SpaceX under a multi-billion dollar contract with NASA, which also organizes rides to the complex for European, Japanese and Canadian astronauts.
“We are putting the finishing touches to the training,” said Pesquet on Monday morning. “There are only… exactly three days, now slightly less, to go before the launch. Everything is OK. The missile is ready. The spacecraft is ready. “
“We actually had a few days of margin that we didn’t need in the end, so now the rocket is just going to sit on the launch pad today and tomorrow, pretty much, for final preparation on Wednesday, and then on Thursday we’re ready to launch, Said Pesquet, who spent 196 days in orbit during a previous trip to the space station. “The crew is satisfied. The crew is in great shape, cheerful. The families are here on the Cape, and everything is fine. We try to enjoy our last days on Earth before leaving the planet for six months. “
The Dragon astronauts will return to Earth in late October for a splashdown off the coast of Florida.
Hoshide will take over the commander of the space station’s Expedition 65 crew next week, taking over from 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 to complete a mission that kicked off in November.
Later this year, Pesquet will get a turn with the space station commander. Pesquet worked as a space technician in European industry and for the French space agency, then became a pilot at Air France before being selected as an ESA astronaut in 2009. It first launched into space in 2016.
During his first space flight, Pesquet launched and landed on a Russian Soyuz capsule, the design of which dates back to the 1960s. He told reporters on Monday that he expects a similar ride during the launch of the Falcon 9 missile, which burns the same kerosene and liquid oxygen fuels as Russia’s venerable Soyuz launcher.
The Crew-2 mission is the first time SpaceX has used a repurposed booster and Crew Dragon spacecraft on an astronaut mission.
“I don’t expect it to be bad at all,” said Pesquet. “Everyone who flew the Dragon and Falcon 9 loved it so far. The return to Earth is always a bit rough, but it’s the same in any space vehicle. “
He said the automation of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft makes the vehicle safer. Under normal circumstances, the capsule flies to and from the space station on autopilot.
“For us, this means we don’t have to take that many actions in a nominal situation,” said Pesquet, who was an instructor in cockpit protocols for Air France. “Of course we have to take action in a non-nominal situation. But what it means is that you are available to deal with the situation. Your situational awareness is just incredible.
“You have those huge, big screens that show you what’s going on in every way possible,” said Pesquet. “The priority of the information has already been pre-analyzed by the system. The color coding is great. The way the information is organized is simply fantastic. You always know what’s going on.
“Soyuz is incredibly reliable, but you had to understand all that information that was sparse and scattered in every corner of your control panel, with digital meters and analog meters,” said Pesquet. “That’s why the training took so much longer. I love it. We’ll love it, and I think it makes the system more reliable overall. “
While forecasters predict good conditions at the Florida launch site early Thursday, officials may need to keep an eye on weather conditions in the Atlantic.
There is a “moderate” risk of poor conditions in the Falcon 9 booster’s down landing zone in the Atlantic Ocean – about due east of South Carolina – and a small chance of adverse winds above the launch pad. SpaceX and NASA officials will continue to evaluate downrange winds and sea conditions at locations across the Atlantic to assess whether conditions are acceptable for the Dragon capsule to crash in the event of an in-flight abortion .
“A wet and unstable pattern will continue over Central Florida as a frontal boundary lingers over the area,” the weather team wrote in the forecast Monday morning. “Rainstorms and isolated thunderstorms are likely because low-pressure waves are moving along the border for the next two days.
“On Wednesday, the high pressure starts to increase and the uncertain weather is pushing south all day. By Thursday morning, the high pressure will be centered near Arkansas, creating gusty northerly winds along the Space Coast as a result of the pressure gradient between the high and departing border, ”the rangers wrote.
“The main weather issue on Thursday morning is these gusty takeoff winds related to this strong pressure gradient.”
At launch on Thursday, forecasters expect a north-northeast wind of 17 to 22 mph, a temperature of about 68 degrees Fahrenheit, and a few low-hanging clouds.
There is also an 80% chance of good weather for an opportunity to launch a backup on Friday at 5:49 a.m. EDT (0949 GMT).
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