SpaceX’s next astronaut mission has been cleared for liftoff.
The corporate and NASA held a flight readiness review (FRR) today (Aug. 21) for Crew-7, which can send 4 astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.
All went well in the course of the roughly seven-hour FRR, keeping Crew-7 on the right track to fly at the top of this week atop a Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida.
“On the conclusion of the review, everybody polled ‘go,’ and we’re proceeding towards a launch at 3:49 am. Eastern Time on Friday,” Ken Bowersox, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, said during a post-FRR press conference this afternoon.
You possibly can watch the Crew-7 liftoff here at Space.com on Friday, courtesy of SpaceX and NASA.
If Crew-7 launches on time, it’s going to arrive on the ISS around 2 a.m. EDT (0600 GMT) on Saturday (Aug. 26). You possibly can watch the approach and docking here at Space.com when the time comes.
The Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon — a capsule called Endurance, which already has two crewed trips to the ISS under its belt — are in fine condition, NASA and SpaceX said during today’s press conference. But when a technical issue crops up, or if the Florida weather fails to cooperate on Friday (definitely a possibility), backup launch opportunities can be found on each Saturday and Sunday (Aug. 27).
Crew-7 is a totally international mission, carrying 4 astronauts from 4 different nations to the orbiting lab. Those crewmembers are NASA’s Jasmin Moghbeli, the commander of Endurance; Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency, who will pilot the capsule; Konstantin Borisov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos and Japan’s Satoshi Furukawa, each of whom will function mission specialists.
The Crew-7 quartet arrived at KSC on Sunday to start final preparations for liftoff. The Falcon 9 and Endurance were rolled out to KSC’s Pad 39A overnight from Sunday (Aug. 20) to Monday.
The Crew-7 astronauts will replace the 4 individuals who flew to the ISS on SpaceX’s Crew-6 mission in March. Crew-6 will come back to Earth about five days after Crew-7 arrives on the orbiting lab, pending good weather within the planned splashdown zone, NASA officials said today.
Though Endurance is in good condition, NASA and SpaceX teams did have some issues to debate during today’s FRR, and the analyses and investigations leading as much as it.
For instance, technicians noticed corrosion in some valves of a couple of other Dragon capsules, including one which flew a robotic resupply mission to the ISS in June. This corrosion was brought on by acid, which formed when oxidizer vapors mixed with moisture, Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Business Crew Program, said during Monday’s press conference.
So Crew-7 teams swapped out some valves on Endurance “and remediated those for flight,” Stich said. “And we have an excellent path forward and good rationale for the remaining of the valves on the vehicle.”