The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with the Dragon crew spacecraft atop, for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 mission rolled out to the launch pad early Sunday, July 27, on the company’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The rocket was raised to vertical place at Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39A, awaiting elevate off no sooner than 12:09 p.m. EDT on Thursday, July 31.
The Crew-11 mission will carry NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov to the International Space Station for a long-duration mission. Crew-11 will conduct new and thrilling scientific analysis aboard the orbiting laboratory to organize for human exploration past low Earth orbit and profit life on Earth. This is first spaceflight for Cardman and Platonov, the second for Yui, and the fourth for Fincke.
The flight is the eleventh crew rotation mission with SpaceX to station, and the twelfth human spaceflight beneath NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. The Crew-11 cadre will fly aboard the SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft that beforehand flew NASA’s SpaceX Demo Mission-2, Crew-2, Crew-6, and Crew-8, along with Axiom Mission 1, the primary personal astronaut mission to the microgravity laboratory.
Keep up with the Crew-11 mission by following alongside on the mission weblog, @NASAKennedy on X, or NASA Kennedy on Facebook.