Former members of Crew-9, Starliner-1 missions unite to fly to the Space Station – Spaceflight Now

A bunch of astronauts and a cosmonaut initially slated to fly on different missions are lastly getting their ticket to experience. The quartet, led by NASA astronaut Zena Cardman, will head to the International Space Station starting with a launch scheduled for Thursday afternoon.

The SpaceX Crew-11 mission will launch onboard the Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft atop a Falcon 9 rocket. Liftoff from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center is scheduled for 12:09 p.m. EDT (1609 UTC).

Spaceflight Now may have stay protection starting about 4 hours previous to liftoff.



On Wednesday, the forty fifth Weather Squadron forecast a 90 % probability for favorable climate at launch. Meteorologists mentioned there was a low chance for interference from cumulus clouds.

“The abort weather also looks very favorable [on Thursday] as well, with winds and waves all along the ascent track being within limits,” mentioned Steve Stich, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program supervisor, throughout a prelaunch briefing on Wednesday. “We’ll watch showers or thunderstorms, potential forecast in the staging area. We’ll watch that very carefully.”

Teams are hoping for launch on Thursday for the reason that climate outlook deteriorates because the week progresses into the weekend.

SpaceX will use the Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail quantity B1094 to launch this mission. It beforehand flew on Starlink 12-10 on April 29 and Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4) on June 25.

The booster skilled a liquid oxygen leak throughout the touchdown on the droneship, ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas,’ throughout the Starlink 12-10 mission, which reappeared throughout prelaunch testing on Ax-4.

The take a look at marketing campaign forward of Crew-11 didn’t present one other leak, however Stich mentioned following the static hearth take a look at on Tuesday (initially scheduled for Monday, however scrubbed because of a sensor difficulty on the strongback), SpaceX changed one of many engine controllers on B1094’s engine 5.

“It had some anomalous signatures and so we’ve replaced that,” Stich mentioned. “We’ve checked that out and it’s good for flight.”

Rather less than eight minutes after liftoff, B1094 will goal a landing at Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. This would be the 53rd touchdown at LZ-1, if all goes effectively, and in keeping with William Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice chairman of Build and Flight Reliability, that is additionally the deliberate final SpaceX use of LZ-1.

The U.S. Space Force is requiring launch suppliers who wish to use touchdown pads to have them positioned on the launch complicated the place the rocket departs. Gerstenmaier mentioned they may proceed use of LZ-2 following the retirement of LZ-1.

The two touchdown pads are positioned at Launch Complex 13, the long run house of Vaya Space and Phantom Space for his or her small, orbital class rockets.

SpaceX upgrades

The Crew-11 mission would be the sixth flight for the Crew Dragon Endeavour, which first flew on the Demo-2 mission in May 2020. NASA and SpaceX carried out thorough critiques of the assorted subsystems on the car, since that is the primary to make a sixth flight.

When Dragon was licensed for long-duration missions as a part of the Commercial Crew Program, it was cleared for as much as 5 flights. Ultimately, NASA and SpaceX wish to clear the spacecraft for as much as 15 flights.

SpaceX launched its fifth and last Crew Dragon car, named Grace, on the Ax-4 mission.

Among a number of the newer modifications made to Dragon are the enhancements made to the car’s warmth defend and to its parachute deployment system. Both have been placed on show throughout the return of Ax-4 from the ISS.

Gerstenmaier mentioned that the Crew-11 pilot, NASA astronaut Mike Fincke, would even be sporting and upgraded intra-vehicular exercise (IVA) flight go well with. He mentioned it featured improved mobility.

Meet the Crew

The 4 members of the Crew-11 mission share the distinctive bond that they have been all beforehand assigned to totally different missions earlier than they discovered their solution to this specific flight.

Cardman was set to fly on the Crew-9 mission as its commander, however when points arose on the Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft amid its Crew Flight Test, NASA opted to floor her and fellow NASA astronaut, Stephanie Wilson, to unlock two seat for use by the CFT crew.

Cardman was shortly reassigned to Crew-11, however as of Thursday, it’s unclear when Wilson could fly. This will likely be Cardman’s first journey to house.

Her pilot, Fincke, could be very accustomed to spaceflight, since this will likely be his fourth journey to the International Space Station and his third spacecraft that may take him there. As a pleasant, full circle second earlier than he flies on Dragon Endeavour, his final journey to house was on STS-134, which featured the Space Shuttle orbiter named Endeavour.

He too got here from one other mission: Starliner-1. He was coaching alongside NASA astronaut and Starliner-1 commander Scott Tingle together with the 2 mission specialists: Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Kimiya Yui.

Yui is now serving as a mission specialist for the Crew-11 mission. This will likely be his second journey to the ISS after beforehand launching a decade in the past on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

He was a part of the event workforce for a JAXA cargo car known as the HTV-X, which is scheduled to launch to the house station this Fall. Yui will assist oversee its arrival and docking, equally to when the fifth HTV spacecraft arrived in 2015.

Rounding out the crew is Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, who’s making his first journey to house. He was coaching to be a backup crew member on a Soyuz flight when he was pulled from that mission by the medical board.

Like six different folks earlier than him, his experience onboard a Dragon spacecraft comes on account of a seat swap settlement between NASA and Roscosmos.

These 4 astronauts and cosmonaut are set to spend at the very least six months, and doubtlessly as much as eight months, onboard the ISS conducting dozens of science experiments.