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Update November 13, 6:00 p.m. EST: NASA announced that the Crew-1 launch on Saturday was delayed until Sunday, November 15 at 7:27 p.m. EST, due to weather conditions.
NASA and SpaceX are all set to launch a full crew into space tomorrow (November 14) from Station 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. This will be the crew’s first operational mission to leave US soil since the final launch of the space shuttle in July 2011. Just six months ago, SpaceX became the first private space flight company to launch American astronauts from American soil with their successful Demo-2 Crew Dragon flight test.
The astronauts – Americans Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi – will fly a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule mounted on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station (ISS). The name of this mission is Crew-1, and the astronauts named their spacecraft Resilience. If time permits, take-off will be at 7:49 p.m. EST. The NASA TV show covering the launch will begin at 3:30 p.m. EST. Watch it here:
As with any launch, there is always the possibility of a weather delay. Meteorologists will be watching the skies over Cape Canaveral in the minutes leading up to the launch, looking for weather conditions that may stop the countdown. A pre-published list of NASA rules states, for example, “Do not take off within 10 nautical miles of a detached storm anvil cloud.”
NASA is also banning the launch if the rocket ends up hovering over bad weather on its way to space. That’s because NASA wants to avoid an emergency projection in dangerous conditions if something goes wrong with the rocket, forcing the astronauts to abort and detach the crew capsule.
Demo-2, the Crew Dragon two-person test flight in May, was delayed for three days due to bad weather, Previously reported Live Science. The save date for Crew-1’s launch is just one day later: November 15th.
Related: Here’s every spacecraft that has ever carried an astronaut into orbit
If all goes according to plan, the astronauts of Crew 1 are expected to reach the space station in orbit 8.5 hours after takeoff. Hopkins, Glover, Walker and Noguchi will join Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, as well as NASA astronaut Kathleen Rubins, who will travel together to the ISS in a Russian Soyuz capsule on October 21. The seven tenants of the ISS will together make “Expedition 64”, the 64th group to work on the ISS. They are expected to remain in orbit for six months, until spring 2021.
Rocket engine problems and billionaire infected with COVID
There are two potential issues that could hinder a smooth launch for Crew-1 tomorrow.
First of all, during Falcon 9 the rockets have been in use for years without major incidents, an Oct. 2 Falcon 9 satellite launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base was halted at the last second due to a new manufacturing defect involving “masking lacquer” red blocking a valve. SpaceX has delayed further Falcon 9 launches until faulty engines can be replaced, Previously reported Live Science. SpaceX launched a GPS satellite aboard a Falcon 9 with the new engines on November 5 without incident.
Crew-1 will be the second launch on the new engines.
Another source of concern emerged earlier today (November 13), when SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk announced the Twitter for which he had tested positive COVID-19[female[feminine. (He also said that “something extremely false is happening” because two of the four tests he took on November 12 came back negative. Musk doesn’t seem to know that false negatives are possible with any test, because Live Science reported.)
“We are counting on SpaceX to perform any appropriate contact tracing,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said at a press conference today, on sister site Live Science Space.com reported. “Of course, if there are any changes to be made, we will look at them. But it is very early now to see if any changes are needed at this point.”
Bridenstine said he was not aware of any contact between Musk and the CREW-1 astronauts.
Originally posted on Live Science.
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