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SpaceX tested a Falcon 9 rocket on Wednesday afternoon at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, clearing a major obstacle before launch on Saturday night – weather permitting – with a crew of four heading to the International Space Station .
The 215-foot-tall Falcon 9 rocket fired its nine Merlin 1D main engines at 3:49 p.m. EST (20:49 GMT) on Wednesday and accelerated to full power for several seconds. Holding clamps held the launcher firmly to the ground as the engines were fed to generate 1.7 million pounds of thrust.
An exhaust wave emerged from the flame trench at pad 39A, and a low rumbling could be heard for miles around as the Falcon 9 performed a pre-flight test firing before a scheduled launch at 7:49 p.m. EST Saturday (00:49 GMT Sunday) with three NASA astronauts and a Japanese space plane bound for the space station.
The mission will be SpaceX’s first operational crew rotation flight using the Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule, following a successful piloted test flight by Crew Dragon to the space station earlier this year.
The static fire test on Wednesday was a usual rehearsal SpaceX performs before most of its missions. Parked inside the launch control center firing hall near Kennedy’s iconic vehicle assembly building, SpaceX’s launch team managed an automated countdown that charged up with kerosene and liquid oxygen thrusters in the all-new two-stage rocket three miles away on pad 39A.
After the engine was fired, the launch team emptied the rockets of propellants and prepared for the next activity – a “dry dress rehearsal” scheduled for Thursday in which NASA Commander Mike Hopkins , pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Shannon Walker and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi will don their pressure suits and climb into their Crew Dragon “Resilience” capsule at pad 39A.
Hopkins and his teammates will use the rehearsal to navigate the stages they will take on the launch pad, from outfit in the NASA crew quarters to the ride to pad 39A inside two Tesla cars. Model X. Once on the platform, the astronauts will board an elevator in the service structure and walk through the crew access arm to the clean room, where SpaceX’s closure team will assist them. to enter the spaceship.
The dress rehearsal Thursday will not involve filling the Falcon 9 rocket with thrusters.
SpaceX and NASA officials plan to convene a launch readiness review on Friday to assess the state of preparations for the Saturday night launch occasion. They will also discuss the weather forecast.
In a tweet confirming the success of the static fire test on Wednesday afternoon, SpaceX said officials were monitoring weather conditions for takeoff from Kennedy Space Center and along the rocket’s flight path to the northeast. over the Atlantic Ocean.
Mission managers will monitor winds, wave conditions, lightning strikes and precipitation at over 50 locations in the Atlantic Ocean off the east coast of the United States, east of the Canadian Maritime provinces and just in western Ireland. The Crew Dragon capsule could abort and splash in these areas if the launch fails.
The first official weather forecast for the Falcon 9 launch opportunity on Saturday evening shows a 60% chance of favorable conditions for takeoff from Florida spaceport. The main weather concern is cumulus clouds, according to the 45th Weather Squadron of the US Space Force.
The forecast does not take into account the wind and wave conditions along the Crew Dragon spacecraft’s ascent corridor across the Atlantic, nor the upper wind criteria for the Falcon 9’s climb into the atmosphere.
A backup launch opportunity is available at 7:27 PM EST Sunday (12:27 AM GMT Monday).
Once launched, the Crew Dragon will pilot an automated rendezvous profile to connect to the space station, delivering Hopkins, Glover, Walker, and Noguchi to the orbiting outpost for a six-month expedition. They will join three other crew members currently living and working on the space station.
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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @ StephenClark1.
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