SpaceX and NASA will strap four space travelers back into their seats for another attempt to launch the Crew-6 mission to the International Space Station targeting an early Thursday morning liftoff from Kennedy Space Center.
The quartet of NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan AlNeyadi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev already made the trip early Monday to Launch Pad 39-A only to be stymied with less than three minutes to go after a ground issue prevented SpaceX from confirming the proper amount of ignition fluid for propellant was flowing into the Falcon 9 rocket’s engines. Post-scrub inspection revealed the culprit was a clogged filter, which has since been replaced.
The new launch looks to send the Crew Dragon Endeavour making a record fourth flight to the ISS lifting off at 12:34 a.m. Astronauts will walk out for their ride back to the launch pad around 9:15 p.m. Wednesday. NASA will provide live coverage starting at 8:45 p.m. on nasa.gov/nasalive and its social media channels.
Space Launch Delta 45′s weather squadron gives a 95% chance for favorable conditions with conditions worsening in the event of a 24- or 48-hour delay. Conditions along the the ascent corridor are within limits, but remain a watch item. The first backup window is at 12:11 a.m. Friday.
The first-stage booster is making its first flight and SpaceX will attempt a recovery on its droneship Just Read the Instruction in the Atlantic Ocean.
Docking would occur after its rendezvous with station at 1:17 a.m. Friday with hatch opening at 3:27 a.m. as the crew joins the seven already on board the ISS as part of Expedition 68. The four members of Crew-5 awaiting their replacements would undock a few days after arrival for a return trip to Earth in their own Crew Dragon with a splashdown off the coast of Florida.
AlNeyadi, who will be the fourth astronaut from an Arab nation to go to space, posted to Twitter images of him with his children for the first walkout saying, “I promised my kids to return soon and I didn’t mean this soon! Anyway, our crew is safe and our spirits are high. A launch scrub is one of the things that we are trained to do, as crew safety is always a priority.”
Crew-6 will spend about six months on board during which they will welcome a steady stream of launch vehicles visiting the station including resupply runs in March and April and then two different crewed missions, the first humans to fly on the Boeing CST-100 Starliner, which is expected in mid- to late-April followed by the four members of the second Axiom Space private mission to visit the station as early as May.
They also have about 200 science experiments and technology demonstrations to perform.
“They’ve got a wide range of research objectives, including investigations aimed at furthering capabilities that we will need for going beyond low-Earth orbit,” said Dana Weigel, NASA’s deputy manager for the ISS program during the flight readiness review this week.
Other science on tap will be studying how things burn in microgravity as well as tissue chip research on heart, brain and cartilage functions, she said.
Bowen is making his fourth flight, having previously launched on Space Shuttle Endeavour, Atlantis and Discovery, but this will be his first trip for a long-term stay on board the station. The rest are rookies.
Crew Dragon Endeavour was the first SpaceX capsule to take astronauts to space flying the Demo-2 mission in May 2020 and returning humans to spaceflight from the U.S. for the first time since the end of the Space Shuttle Program in 2011. Endeavour has since flown Crew-2 and the first private astronaut mission to the ISS for Axiom Space.
This will mark SpaceX’s sixth operational crew flight to the station and ninth Crew Dragon flight with humans on board overall including two private missions and Demo-2. There are three more Crew Dragon missions planed for 2023. Each of the company’s current fleet of four capsules — Endeavour, Endurance, Resilience and Freedom — are rated for five flights. A fifth capsule is planned to come online in 2024.
