CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. NASA’s next crew of astronauts is ready to strap themselves into a SpaceX Dragon capsule and launch into space.
The four astronauts are scheduled to go to the International Space Station (ISS) on SpaceX’s next manned mission Thursday (April 22) at 6:11 a.m. EST (1011 GMT). They rehearsed that launch day today (April 18) with a final dress rehearsal before morning.
The space flyers – NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Thomas Pesquet from France and Akihiko Hoshide from Japan – arrived at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida on Friday (April 16) and have already begun their final preparations for the launch, including a brief conversation with reporters broadcast from the astronaut crew’s quarters.
“It’s great to be here at the Kennedy Space Center,” said Kimbrough, the Crew-2 mission commander during the chat. “We already had some training this morning, yesterday we had to go to the trail to see the rocket and our spacecraft, which is really exciting for us.”
“It’s great to be here,” added McArthur. “We are excited and ready to launch.”
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In the Crew-2 mission, an experienced SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch a refurbished rocket Crew dragon spacecraft on a 23-hour journey to the space station. The launch is scheduled for 6:11 a.m. EDT on Thursday (1011 GMT) from KSC’s historic Pad 39A. If all goes according to plan, the Crew Dragon – dubbed Endeavor by the previous crew – will dock at the ISS around 5:30 a.m. EDT (0930 GMT) on Friday.
Their ride to orbit will be the first time the crew will not ride to space on a shiny new space Falcon 9 missileTheir booster, which rolled to the pad Friday morning (April 16) for a scheduled prelaunch static fire test on Saturday (April 17), first flew in November when it took the Crew-1 crew to space.
Crew-2 is the second operational contracted mission to be launched as part of NASA’s commercial crewing program. Kimbrough, McArthur, Pesquet and Hoshide will remain aboard the space station for a six-month mission.
“I just want to take a moment to thank the people who brought us here, who got us ready, and who got all this ready to make it happen,” said Crew-2 pilot Megan McArthur. “It’s a huge number of people, including of course our families, who make sacrifices along the way as we prepare.”
“And I really want to take every opportunity to thank you because we know how much work it takes and we really appreciate it,” she added.
Astronauts flair
McArthur has been generating rumors of late for her sparkly taste in shoes. When she arrived at Kennedy Space Center, she was wearing her signature astronaut blues and a pair of silver glitter boots. When asked if she could comment on them, McArthur said, “I don’t know if I can explain them, but I can show them again.”
“They’re pretty cool,” said Pesquet, her crew member Friday after the crew arrived. “It was said we were all wearing them, but for some reason she was drowned out.”
McArthur said the boots bring her joy.
“I think it’s been a tough year for everyone and I decided I needed a little extra sparkle,” she said. “It’s just fun to wear them.”
But that’s not the only flair that McArthur sports – a special patch that few astronauts have on her jacket. McArthur said she deserved it on her shuttle flight to fix the Hubble Space Telescope.
“Hubble is in a different orbit than the Space Station, so getting there you have to travel faster on main engine shutdown (MECO) than on a normal mission,” explains McArthur. “So our commander had these patches made for us when we got home.”
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A launch of Earth Day
Crew-2 is scheduled 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 Day .
“Only by going into space have we been able to step back and really measure all the variables that allow scientists to determine what is happening to the planet,” he said.
Pesquet says that as astronauts, they are all part of the global effort to understand climate change and how humanity affects the planet. That thanks to the research done in space, NASA and its partners are able to better assess the health of the planet and try to make it better, as the slogan says, “from the Earth, for the Earth”.
That’s a phrase that McArthur says she thinks about every time she leaves the planet. “When we go to space, we are really doing an incredible job for everyone here on Earth,” she said. “So it’s very special and humble to be a part of something that will help people and all of humanity.”
“I think it’s a great symbol we are launching on Earth Day,” added Pesquet.
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Dragon training
This is the third overall manned flight of a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, and as such, the current crew has learned a thing or two from its previous pilots. 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 it took off.
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 as her. When asked about any advice he might have given her, she said that “he shared tidbits along the way, [about the vehicle], but no specific advice. ”
“However, I learned from him for several years when they developed the vehicle,” she said. “And when I went through the training, I really had a framework to put some of that information.”
The previous crews happened to talk about what the Dragon and Falcon sound like as they climb to orbit and that’s one of the things Kimbrough and Hoshide look forward to at launch.
“For Shane and I, it will be our third spacecraft to leave Earth,” Hoshide said. “We’re looking forward to the rumble and G-troops pressing on our chests.”
“It will be a lot of fun,” he added.
“It’s really nice to know what sounds to expect when going through a very dynamic phase,” said Kimbrough.
He explained that after each mission, the NASA and SpaceX teams are increasingly able to streamline the training process thanks to lessons learned and feedback from astronauts. “We are truly the first crew to have completed a series of training on templates, even though two others have gone before us,” he said. “So we’ve had a little less than a year of training, while the crews have had several years of training before us.”
“I think it’s in a good place now and we’ll just continue refining as we move forward with future missions.”
Launch 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 has officially reached space on the ascent to Earth orbit.
On SpaceX’s unmanned Demo-1 flight to the space station, launched in March 2019, SpaceX placed a plush earth toy in the Dragon cockpit so mission controllers could see when the craft reached space. (The plush earth began to float around the cabin when this happened.) On Demo-2, Hurley and Behnken had their young sons choose the indicator.
The boys chose one pink and blue dinosaur with sequins, while the Crew-1 crew chose a plush baby joda. When asked what the indicator would be this time and whether McArthur’s son would have a hand in selecting a second toy, McArthur said that “our crew will have a zero-G indicator that we chose together.”
“We all have sons and daughters who belong to this mission,” she said, “so our families have chosen an indicator that you’ll see once we reach zero-G.”
Unlike crews in Russia who have their own pre-launch traditions, which doesn’t really involve viewing the rocket, the Crew-2 astronauts were able to continue the SpaceX tradition of taking crews to see their rocket before launch day.
“We came in here by plane and we had to fly along the path and watch our missile get ready to take off,” said McArthur. “There’s really nothing like looking out the window and seeing a spaceship prepare and realize you’re going to be riding it in a few days.”
“It’s a wonderful feeling,” she said.
After a brief chat with the media after getting off the plane, the quartet of astronauts were treated to a personal and close-up view of their rocket.
“When we stopped at the rocket, we giggled,” Kimbrough told Space.com, “I think we all couldn’t believe it’s our rocket.”
He said that when they got to the launch pad, the rocket was not completely vertical and they could see how the rocket went vertical on the launch pad. “It was really nice to watch him go from about halfway all the way to the vertical position and then see the crew access arm swinging,” said Kimbrough. “It was quite special.”
“It looks fantastic,” Hoshide said. “We look forward to actually riding and flying on it.”
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