[ad_1]
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif .– NASA reassigns two astronauts from Boeing’s commercial crew missions to a SpaceX mission as the agency resolves delays in the development of the CST-100 Starliner and draws up a seat barter deal with Russia .
NASA announced on October 6 that astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada will be the commander and pilot of SpaceX’s Crew-5 mission, respectively, of the Crew Dragon, launched to the International Space Station in the fall of 2022 at the earliest. two other people the flight of this mission will be announced later.
Mann was previously part of the three-person Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission, Starliner’s first crewed flight. Cassada was part of Starliner-1, the first operational Starliner mission that will follow the CFT mission. Neither CFT nor Starliner-1 have firm launch dates due to continued delays in the second unmanned Starliner mission, Orbital Flight Test 2. The reassignments were first reported by Ars Technica on October 5, which at the time did not expect an official announcement for weeks. or month.
In a previously scheduled briefing on the upcoming SpaceX Crew-3 mission on October 6, NASA officials said they reassigned Cassada and Mann because they wanted to give the two novice astronauts a flying experience as soon as possible. “For us, it seemed like the right time,” said Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager. “We really wanted to get some experience with Nicole and Josh and get them to space as soon as possible.”
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Mike Fincke remained assigned to the CFT mission and Suni Williams to Starliner-1. All three are veteran astronauts, and NASA has said more astronauts will be added to these missions in the future.
He also remains on Starliner-1 Jeanette Epps, another novice astronaut who was pulled from a Soyuz mission to the ISS in 2018 for reasons the agency refused to disclose at the time. “We are reassessing this flight assignment,” Stich said. “Since Starliner-1 is a bit further away than CFT, we are reviewing this mission and seeing if that would change over time. ”
NASA is hoping that one of the two open seats on Crew-5 will be occupied by a Russian cosmonaut. The agency is continuing talks with Roscosmos over a seat barter deal to allow NASA and other Western astronauts to fly the Soyuz spacecraft in exchange for Russian cosmonauts flying in commercial vehicles. Such “mixed crews” would ensure that astronauts and cosmonauts would be on the station in the event of a problem with a Soyuz, Crew Dragon, or Starliner spacecraft.
“We have been working with our Russian partners on what we call a ‘crew exchange’ strategy,” Kathy Lueders, associate administrator for space operations at NASA, said at the briefing. “We have demonstrated that the Crew Dragon is a capable vehicle for the future, and now it’s just a matter of putting in place the next layer of government-to-government agreements to support that.”
Joel Montalbano, head of NASA’s ISS program, said he met with officials from Roscosmos last week in Moscow about the deal. “Our goal is still that Crew-5 by fall 22, have a cosmonaut on this vehicle,” he said, “and we would have an American on the Soyuz in the same amount of time.”
This would rule out flying a cosmonaut on Crew-4, launched in the spring of 2022. NASA had left one of the four seats on this mission open in case an agreement could be found in time. Stich said a replacement crew member for Crew-4 will be assigned to fill that seat “at the right time.”
The next Soyuz crew rotation mission, launched in spring 2022, will have three Russian cosmonauts on board. Montalbano said NASA had no plans to acquire a seat on that flight, as it did earlier this year when it struck a deal with a third party, Axiom Space, to purchase the seat and pilot NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei in place of a Russian cosmonaut. Montalbano said the transfer between Crew-3 and Crew-4 missions will be timed “so that we maintain an American presence on board.”
Crew Dragon Updates
The briefing focused on the Crew-3 mission, launched on October 30 and sending NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron, and ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer to the ISS.
The flight will be the first for a new Crew Dragon spacecraft, the third in SpaceX’s fleet. SpaceX made minor modifications to this vehicle based on experience from previous flights, including the Crew-1 mission where, upon returning to Earth, debris caused minor damage to one of the stabilizer parachutes. .
Stich said the problem stemmed from a “minor sleeve” on the drug meant to protect the parachute’s elevation lines from abrasion. “We have already corrected that to improve some seams on this little sleeve,” he said.
Another issue is with the spacecraft’s waste management system, where a small connection “could be a little loose,” said Sarah Walker, director of dragon mission management at SpaceX. “We just made an improvement to make this joint a little tighter.”
SpaceX is also sharing with NASA the data it collected during Inspiration4’s private Crew Dragon mission in September. Stich said the mission is interesting because it flew higher than those on the ISS, exposing the spacecraft to a greater amount of micrometeroids and orbital debris. The three-day flight also offered a more robust test of the spacecraft’s survival system.
In addition to the new Crew Dragon for the Crew-3 mission, SpaceX is building a fourth Crew Dragon which Walker says should be ready in spring 2022, possibly for the Crew-4 mission. There are no plans, she added, to build more Crew Dragon capsules at this time. “These four Crew Dragon vehicles seem sufficient to meet our manifesto, which is in full swing.”
[ad_2]
Source link