Dress rehearsal countdown sets the stage for SpaceX Crew Dragon launch

Four astronaut launch this weekend aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon a spacecraft strapped to the top of a Falcon 9 rocket at Kennedy Space Center Thursday for a dress rehearsal countdown as engineers review preparations and monitor weather conditions offshore in the wake of Tropical storm condition.

Crew 1 Commander Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker, and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, dressed in futuristic-looking SpaceX pressure suits, were driven to Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in SUVs White Tesla, just as they will be on Saturday, weather if possible, for a 7:49 p.m. EST launch.

With the astronauts strapped in side-by-side, monitoring the high-tech touchscreens in the Crew Dragon capsule they named “Resilience,” SpaceX’s launch controllers monitored the countdown to Gun Hall 4 in the center. NASA launch control station three miles from the platform.

The next major step will come on Friday when NASA and SpaceX officials and engineers, following strict coronavirus protocols, conduct a formal launch readiness review to complete a final flight readiness assessment of the aircraft. ‘team.

Forecasters predict a 70% chance of acceptable weather on Saturday night at the Kennedy Space Center. But the outlook is less certain for winds and sea states in the Atlantic Ocean along the northeast path the Falcon 9 will take to propel the Crew Dragon into space station orbit.

Relatively calm seas are needed to reclaim the Falcon 9’s first stage, which the company plans to reuse for the next Crew Dragon flight in six months. And generally benign conditions are needed throughout the flight path in the event of a malfunction that could force the crew to do an emergency splash.

“We obviously look at the weather, the weather is a big problem, the weather for several regions,” Kathy luedersNASA chief of space exploration told Spaceflight Now on Friday. “The droneship that we need where the first leg is going to land is actually headed for today. And with the way the seas are, and the way Eta is, we’re kind of looking at how fast this droneship can do it.”

If the droneship is not on the station on time, the launch will likely be delayed.

“The weather on landing for the first leg is a big problem,” said Lueders. “This is the stage we’ll be using for Crew-2, so we care about that. Not that we never care about them, but it’s a big step.”

After passing through Florida on Wednesday, Tropical Storm Eta was expected to follow a parallel path along the east coast to North Carolina and then into the Atlantic. On Saturday morning, the center of the storm should be well offshore east of Boston.

SpaceX is monitoring data from around 50 buoys along the path that measure winds and wave heights, data that will be analyzed before the final decision to proceed with the launch is made.