The next launch window for a NASA crew to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX rocket ship has been pushed back by at least two more days, to no earlier than April 22, the space agency said.
SpaceX, the private rocket company of billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, was previously scheduled to put its second “ operational ” space station team into orbit for NASA in late March. But NASA announced in January that the target date had been pushed back to April 20.
The schedule was readjusted based on available flight times to the space station, powered by orbital mechanics, which would minimize the astronauts’ sleep needs, NASA spokesman Dan Huot said Monday.
The flight marks only the space station’s second full-fledged crew rotation mission to be launched aboard a private spacecraft: a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon capsule that it will orbit.
The four-man SpaceX Crew-2 consists of two NASA astronauts, Mission Commander Shane Kimbrough and Pilot Megan McArthur, along with Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and fellow European Space Agency mission specialist Thomas Pesquet.
After docking at the space station, they join the four SpaceX Crew-1 astronauts who arrived in November and cosmonauts who are taken to orbit the outpost aboard a Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft.
The newly arrived Crew-2 will remain in orbit for six months, while Crew-1 is expected to return to Earth in early May.
McArthur becomes the second person in her family to ride a Crew Dragon into space. Her husband, Bob Behnken, was one of two NASA astronauts on the first-ever manned Crew Dragon launch, a test flight last August that marked NASA’s first human orbital mission from US soil in nine years, following the end of the space shuttle program. in 2011.
In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more important than ever.
By subscribing, you can help us get the story right.
SUBSCRIBE NOW
PHOTO GALLERY (CLICK TO ENLARGE)
