[ad_1]
Christina Koch, NASA astronaut, will break the record for the longest space flight for a woman. (Credit: NASA)
Since the withdrawal of the space shuttle in 2011, NASA has paid Russia for its journeys to the International Space Station. They hoped that this dependence would end in 2019. But with the new range of flights and launch dates announced this week, the space agency acknowledged that it had not finished using Russian Soyuz rockets yet.
NASA will remain dependent on Russia for the next round of space station rotations. Due to delays in the commercial launches of SpaceX and Boeing, for which NASA has paid billions for the transport of crews to the ISS, the space agency is now moving towards missions longer for their astronauts, who will continue to catch Soyuz rockets.
In fact, the new list of long-term crew members and launch dates for the following year do not list flights in commercial launch.
Delays of commercial crews
NASA had planned to stop buying flights to the space station aboard Russian Soyuz flights by the end of 2019 and instead move to buying seats at SpaceX and Boeing. But both companies have experienced delays and are still testing and being certified to fly humans.
The NASA solution, to avoid abandoning the ISS in the meantime, was to buy two additional Soyuz seats to be able to use them until 2019 and early 2020, and extend the tasks of their crew.
As a result, Christina Koch, NASA's astronaut, who is currently conducting her first spaceflight, will remain on board the ISS for a total of 335 days – a record for any woman in space and a little less than Scott Kelly's 340-day record for a NASA astronaut. NASA hopes to take advantage of this new schedule to find out more about human long-term space duration, following their recent discoveries based on Kelly's twin astronauts. His other astronaut, Andrew Morgan, will also be aboard the ISS for an extended stay of at least seven months, although his return date is not yet fixed.
What goes up must come down
On June 24, three of the current ISS residents, Anne McClain of NASA, David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency and Oleg Kononenko of Roscosmos will return to Earth with a Soyuz capsule. A month later, on July 20, the resort will regain its maximum capacity of six people with the arrival of Morgan for his long stay, Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency and Alexander Skvortsov of Roscosmos.
SpaceX still hopes to send its Demo-2 mission in July, with astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley on board. They will only stay two weeks and go home as they came. They are a key part of SpaceX's certification and testing program, but they will not count as members of the expedition crew for the ISS.
On September 25, NASA astronaut Jessica Meir and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka will embark on their missions. They will be joined by Hazzaa Ali Almansoori from the United Arab Emirates, who will fly thanks to Roscosmos, who will only stay in space for a short stay. He will return to Earth on October 2, with current ISS residents Nick Hague and Alexey Ovchinin.
And in February 2020, Parmitano, Skvortsov and Koch will return to Earth, followed by Meir, Skripochka and Morgan in the spring.
By the end of 2019, Boeing is still considering conducting a crew test of its Starliner spacecraft, following an unarmed test flight conducted in August. It is now expected that the crewed flight will last a few months, but dates are yet to be determined. Initially, like SpaceX's inaugural flight, Boeing's first crew tests were to last only a few weeks.
Both companies must also perform a pad drop test and complete their parachute test, although they are progressing. Boeing finished his fourth of five parachute tests in March.
The delays have increased, but both companies seem to be getting closer to the finish line.
[ad_2]
Source link