After an all-day review, NASA and SpaceX have provisionally approved a facelift Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 missile for launch next Thursday to bring a crew of three men and one woman to the International Space Station.
It will be the third piloted flight to orbit from US soil since the shuttle retired in 2011, and the second operational Crew Dragon flight, as NASA no longer relies solely on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft to to transport astronauts to and from low Earth orbit.
Pending resolution of a suspected minor technical problem, the launch of historic path 39A at Kennedy Space Center is scheduled for 6:11 a.m.ET on April 22, which also happens to be Earth Day, bringing a 23- hour-long encounter with the space station begins. .
NASA / SpaceX
In Kazakhstan, meanwhile, Russian recovery crews and NASA support personnel were deployed for the planned return and landing of a Soyuz spacecraft that returned three space station crewmembers to Earth.
Soyuz MS-17 / 63S commander Sergey Ryzhikov, flight engineer Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, and NASA astronaut Kate Rubins are expected to disembark from the laboratory complex at 9:34 p.m. ET Friday and land on the Kazakhstan steppe. Saturday (10:56 AM local time).
The landing comes just six days after another Soyuz reached the space station with three new crew members: Soyuz MS-18 / 64S commander Oleg Novitskiy, flight engineer Pyotr Dubrov and NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei.
The two rotational flights of the Soyuz crew set the stage for the launch of SpaceX Crew Dragon on Thursday and the return to Earth of another Crew Dragon on April 28, bringing four astronauts home after spending 164 days in space.
During a formal flight readiness review at Kennedy Space Center, senior managers agreed to proceed with the launch of the SpaceX “Crew-2” astronauts next week and the return of the four Crew-1 station pilots they replace.
NASA / SpaceX
“This was an important milestone today as that’s when the teams come together … and we put that stamp of approval that it’s safe for our astronauts to get in the vehicle and launch, and, in the case of Crew-1 get home safely, ”said Norm Knight, deputy director of flight operations at Johnson Space Center.
The Crew-2 Falcon 9 rocket, with the same first stage that launched the first operational Crew Dragon mission – Crew-1 – in November, was expected to be towed from SpaceX’s hangar at the base of Path 39A Thursday night.
Crew 2 commander Shane Kimbrough, co-pilot Megan McArthur, European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet and Japanese aviator Akihiko Hoshide, all space veterans, are expected to fly to the Florida spaceport Friday afternoon to complete final preparations for the launch. to start.
SpaceX engineers plan to test the Falcon 9’s first stage engines Saturday morning and countdown a dress rehearsal with the astronauts early Sunday. The test firing and dress rehearsal are both timed to mimic actual launch day procedures and timing.
NASA
Only one problem remains under the microscope as we enter a busy weekend.
Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA’s former director of space flight operations and now a SpaceX vice president, said engineers recently discovered that slightly more liquid oxygen propellant was routinely pumped into Falcon 9 first stage tanks before launch than they had realized.
The difference is only an extra few inches in the supercooled oxygen tank, but engineers want to make sure they understand the discrepancy and what potential impact it could have on performance or safety.
Assuming a timely launch on Thursday, the Crew-2 astronauts will dock in the forward port of the station this Friday morning, April 23.
They will be welcomed aboard by Space Station Commander Shannon Walker and fellow Crew-1 astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, along with Novitskiy, Dubrov and Vande Hei.
After a week’s “transfer” to familiarize their replacements with station operations, the Crew-1 astronauts take their SpaceX capsule to a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico south of Tallahassee, Florida, around 12:40 a.m.ET on April 28. .
Before leaving, Walker will hand over command of the station to Hoshide, who will be in charge of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo