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NASA’s Shannon Walker, Victor Glover and Michael Hopkins will join JAXA’s Soichi Noguchi for the SpaceX Crew Dragon’s first operational Crew-1 flight.
NASA
It is no longer a test. SpaceX seeks to make transfers of astronauts from the International Space Station a normal part of NASA operations with the Mission Crew-1 – his first crew rotation flight – this Sunday, November 15. The launch was postponed to Saturday due to land winds and potential issues with salvage operations.
SpaceX Revolutionary Demo-2 mission safely delivered two NASA astronauts to the ISS in May. It was both heartbreaking and exciting as real humans tested Crew Dragon for the first time. Crew-1 will follow in the footsteps of this successful mission with a launch on a Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine tweeted the news of the launch delay Friday. The weather must be good not only at the launch site, but also on the water where astronauts would land in a launch emergency.
Update: Due to land winds and salvage operations, @NASA and @SpaceX aim to launch the Crew-1 mission with astronauts @Space station at 7:27 p.m. EST on Sunday November 15. There are plans to reuse the first stage booster to pilot astronauts on Crew-2. #LaunchAmerica
– Jim Bridenstine (@JimBridenstine) November 13, 2020
Crew-1 will transport NASA’s Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, as well as Soichi Noguchi of the Japanese space agency JAXA, to the station for a six-month stay. The crew named the spacecraft “Resilience”.
NASA will live stream the launch on Sunday and provide ongoing coverage of the mission, including docking, opening hatches and welcoming ceremony. Take-off is scheduled for 4:27 p.m. PT, although coverage will begin earlier.
The launch had already been postponed from an earlier date due to a technical problem with some Falcon 9 rocket engines during a previous attempt to launch a US Space Force GPS satellite mission.
Founder of SpaceX Elon Musk said he could have COVID-19 on Friday, but there is no indication yet if that could have an impact on the launch of Crew Dragon. The astronauts were in quarantine before the launch.
NASA announced that Crew Dragon was “the first new crewed spacecraft to be certified by NASA for scheduled flights with astronauts from the space shuttle nearly 40 years ago” in a statement Tuesday. SpaceX tweeted spectacular photos showing Crew Dragon and Falcon 9 vertically on the Kennedy Space Center launch pad earlier in the week.
SpaceX and Boeing are partners of NASA in the Commercial crew program, an effort to bring ISS astronaut launches back to US soil after years of relying on Russian spacecraft. Crew-1 is a defining moment in this process.
To learn more about Crew-1, here’s everything you need to know.
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