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NASA SpaceX’s first operational Crew Dragon mission is expected to launch on Saturday.
The mission will bring NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi to the International Space Station aboard the Crew Dragon vehicle. It follows a successful Demo-2 mission earlier this year.
“Today’s flight readiness review is officially over and we are heading to #LaunchAmerica on November 14,” NASA tweeted Tuesday.
“@NASA and @SpaceX have completed the certification of #CrewDragon! NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine tweeted Tuesday. “I am extremely proud to say that we regularly flip launches of manned flights on American soil on an American rocket and spacecraft.”
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Crew-1 is scheduled to launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 7:49 p.m. EST on Saturday from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Crew Dragon spacecraft is expected to dock with the ISS at 4:20 a.m. on Sunday.
Astronaut Soichi Noguchi of Japan, left to right, NASA astronauts Shannon Walker, Victor Glover and Michael Hopkins walk after arriving at Kennedy Space Center on Sunday, November 8, 2020, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. The four astronauts to fly on SpaceX Crew-1 mission to the International Space Station is expected to launch on November 14, 2020
(AP Photo / Terry Renna)
The launch was previously scheduled for October 31, but was pushed back to November 14 when the Falcon rocket had two engines replaced due to contamination from a red lacquer used in processing.
The six-month mission is the first rotational crew flight on an American commercial spacecraft.
The astronauts named their capsule Dragon Resilience in the face of all the challenges of 2020: coronavirus and social isolation, protests against racial injustice, and a particularly difficult electoral and electoral season. They’ve been in quarantine for a week or two, and taking safety precautions – masks and social distancing – long before that.
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On the orbiting space lab, Team Crew-1 will join NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, who is already on the space station, to conduct extensive scientific research. “Not only will Crew 1 astronauts and NASA Expedition 64 astronaut Kate Rubins conduct hundreds of microgravity studies during their mission, but they will also provide new scientific equipment and experiments carried into space with them inside Crew Dragon, ”said NASA in a statement.
Astronauts will study the physiology of food, conduct a student-designed experiment on genes in space and grow radishes, as well as the interaction between microbes and rocks in microgravity.
Other experiments include using devices the size of a USB stick containing human cells to study the effects of space on human organs and a study of changes in cardiovascular cells and tissues in microgravity. Experiments will also be conducted on NASA’s next-generation spacesuit, the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU).
The mission marks another milestone for the U.S. space program after the Demo-2 flight earlier this year.
On August 2, NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken splashed in the Gulf of Mexico aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, ending their historic two-month trip to space.
The mission marked the first astronaut launch from US soil since the space shuttle’s last flight in 2011. Amid a surge in publicity, the Demo-2 mission took off from the Kennedy Space Center atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on May 30.
After the space shuttle program ended, the United States relied on Russian Soyuz rockets launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to bring astronauts into space. Russia charges the United States about $ 75 million to send an astronaut into space. The Associated Press reports that the last Soyuz note cost the United States $ 90 million.
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Chris Ciaccia, Kristin Fisher, Lauren Blanchard and the Associated Press of Fox News contributed to this article. Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers
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