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With their eyes riveted on Tropical Storm Eta approaching south Florida, the four astronauts scheduled to launch on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft next Saturday arrived at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center after taking off from their base in Houston.
Commander Mike Hopkins, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialists Shannon Walker and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi flew to Kennedy from Ellington Field near the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Their NASA-chartered jet landed at the Kennedy Launch and Landing Facility shortly before 2 p.m. EST (7 p.m. GMT) on Sunday.
Hopkins and his teammates – now in quarantine to avoid exposure to diseases such as COVID-19 – have completed most of their training and will spend the next few days reviewing flight plans and trying out their pressure suits manufactured by SpaceX. The crew will board the Crew Dragon spacecraft – dubbed “Resilience” – on Launch Pad 39A on Wednesday during a pre-flight dress rehearsal.
“We flew a plane here, but the plan is for us to go off on top of a rocket, so that’s pretty neat. It’s pretty awesome, ”said Glover, a US Navy commander ready to make his first trip to orbit. “Go Falcon, go Dragon and go Resilience.”
“Hello Florida. Hello America. It really feels good to be here, ”Hopkins said. “We are ready… We are starting this new era where we will rotate crews to the International Space Station from American soil with our business partners like SpaceX. So we are very happy to be part of it. “
The Crew-1 mission, scheduled to launch on Saturday at 7:49 p.m. EST (00:49 GMT Sunday) from Station 39A, will mark the space station’s first regular rotational flight with the Crew Dragon spacecraft. from SpaceX, after a two-month test flight earlier this year that marked the first astronaut launch into orbit from U.S. soil since the Space Shuttle retired in 2011.
Longtime crew members heading to the space station exclusively launched Russian Soyuz capsules for nearly a decade.
NASA has partnered with SpaceX and Boeing to develop new human-capable spacecraft to transport crews to and from the International Space Station.
As SpaceX is set to launch its first “operational” crew rotation flight next weekend, Boeing continues to work on software issues encountered during an unmanned test flight of its Starliner capsule. ‘last year. Another Starliner test flight without astronauts could take off in January, followed by a three-person crew demonstration mission later next year.
“Today we are taking another big step forward in this transformation of the way we perform human spaceflight,” said Jim Bridenstine, administrator of NASA. “What we’re talking about here is the commercialization of space, where NASA is one of the clients of many clients in a very robust commercial market in low earth orbit.
“What we’re doing is going from a test flight to operational flights,” Bridenstine said on Sunday. “Make no mistake, every flight is a test flight when it comes to space travel, but it’s also true that we need to be able to get to the International Space Station on a regular basis.
Assuming the Crew Dragon takes off on Saturday night as scheduled, Crew-1 astronauts will connect with the space station about eight and a half hours later at 4:20 a.m. EST (9:20 a.m. GMT) Sunday.
But gusts of wind and bands of rain from Tropical Storm Eta could delay launch preparations on Florida’s space coast this week. The tropical storm is expected to pass through the Florida Keys overnight Sunday through Monday, then drift into the southeastern Gulf of Mexico before potentially moving to the west coast of Florida at the end of this week.
Hopkins said Crew 1 astronauts will be following the weather forecast “very closely” this week.
“Obviously, this is potentially going to have an impact,” Hopkins said.
Strong winds from the outer bands of Tropical Storm Eta forced United Launch Alliance to return an Atlas 5 rocket to its hangar at Cape Canaveral on Friday, delaying the launch of a classified U.S. government spy satellite until Wednesday.
SpaceX also delayed the deployment of the Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule on pad 39A until Monday, which postponed a firing test of the rocket’s nine main Merlin 1D engines on the launch pad from Monday. evening to Tuesday evening.
“We’ll adapt, we’ll adjust and we’ll be ready to go when the weather is good too,” Hopkins said.
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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @ StephenClark1.
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