Four astronauts prepare to go into orbit in SpaceX’s crew dragon “resilience” orbit on Thursday at the Kennedy Space Center in practice for the launch of the International Space Station on Saturday night.
Meanwhile, NASA and SpaceX operators are seeing weakening weather and ocean conditions that could make it difficult for the Falcon 9 rocket to recover the crew dragon in the event of a reusable first-stage booster or flight emergency.
NASA Commander Mike Hopkins, pilot Victor Glover, mission expert Shannon Waker, and Japanese astronaut Sochi Noguchi put on their black and white flight suits on Thursday and boarded a Tesla SUV from their crew quarters at the Falcon 9 seaside launch complex.
They rode an elevator over the launch tower, walked toward the crew access arm, and entered the top of the 215-foot (63-meter) Falcon 9 launcher in their crew dragon spacecraft. A few hours later, the astronauts exited the capsule and returned to the crew quarters inside the Neil Armstrong operations and checkout building in Kennedy.
Engineers continued to evaluate data from the test firing of the Falcon 9 rocket on Wednesday ahead of a launch readiness review on Friday, during which SpaceX and NASA officials will decide whether to proceed with the launch attempt at 7:49 p.m. EST (0049 GMT Sunday). ).
Kathy Luders, associate director of NASA’s Directorate of Human Research and Mission Operations, said Thursday that there are no specific technical issues under discussion in light of the launch readiness review.
“We’re obviously watching the weather,” Lloyders said in an interview with SpaceFlight Now. “Weather is a big deal, weather for multiple areas.”
The tropical storm headed for the North Florida Peninsula on Thursday, and it was forecast to move into the Northeast Atlantic Ocean. By Saturday, the remains of the cyclone are forecast to be in the east of the Canadian Maritime Province.
The Falcon 9 rocket will line the northeast of Florida’s space coast with the space station’s orbital track.
Mission managers will track wind, wave conditions, lightning and rain at more than 50 locations in the Atlantic Ocean, east of Canada, west of Ireland. In the event of a crew Dragon Capsule launching failure, those areas may be abandoned and released, and rescue teams will be dispatched to help the astronauts recover.
The weather forecast released Thursday for the Falcon 9 launch opportunity on Saturday night shows a 70% probability of favorable conditions for a lift off at Florida Spaceport. According to the 45th Weather Squadron of the US Space Force, the primary concern of the weather is with cumulus clouds.
The forecast does not take into account wind and wave conditions with the crew dragon spacecraft’s ascending corridor in the Atlantic and the upper level wind criteria for climbing into the Falcon 9’s atmosphere.
Luders said SpaceX and NASA officials are also exploring the process of a football field-sized drone ship that will be used for the landing of the first phase booster of the Falcon 9.
“The drone ship that we need in the first phase to land has really come out today,” Luteters told Spaceflight Now. “And how is the sea, and with that, we’re seeing how the drone ship can get it out quickly ઝડપથી so we’ll talk about that in our launch readiness review tomorrow, just where is it? Will it be done on time for us to be able to launch on Saturday? ”
Launching Saturday night will mark the launch of the Crew-1 mission, the astronauts’ first “operational” flight on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft. Hopkins and his cremates will live and work for six months on the International Space Station, before the crew dragon returns to Earth for a parachute-assisted splashdown at sea.
The next Crew Dragon launch, temporarily targeted on March 30, 2021, will use a reusable Falcon 9 booster with the crew of a new four-person space station, again with the Crew-1 mission.
“Obviously, the landing weather for the first phase is a big deal,” Lloyders said. “This is the phase we will use for Crew-2, so we will take care of it. It’s not that we never take care of it, but this is an important stage. “
Luders said NASA has a backup rocket available for the Crew-2 launch if the Falcon 9 booster is unable to land on the SpaceX Crew-1 mission. If there is a problem with the recovery of the Crew-1 rocket, NASA is preparing to launch the Crew-2 mission with the Falcon 9 booster, which is set to launch the Sentinel-6 Michael Freelich ocean satellite satellite from California later this month, Luders said.
“We have a backup in case something happens at this particular stage, but we have made all our observations at this stage. “We are all done. We understand hardware. So we really want to use it because it makes the task easier for Crew-2.
“One of the things we’re looking at is using a Sentinel-6 booster because it’s the booster we’ve seen,” Lloyds said. “It’ll be a flight on it. It’s just that we have a lot of hardware out there that we can use. “
The SpaceX drone ship “Just Read Instructions” departed from Port Canaveral on Thursday, moving a few miles north of Cape Canaveral.
“The second place we worry about the weather is the launch weather,” Lloyds said Thursday. “Then we have to look at the weather above the abort track, so we’ll see it all when we review our initial review tomorrow, and then see if we’ll go for the first day or go down any road. To target the Saturday evening projection, or we go on Sunday. “
The opportunity to launch B Backup Cup is available on EST Sunday at 7:27 PM (0027 GMT Monday).
Once launched, the crew will fly an automated rendered profile to connect to the Dragon space station, where Hopkins and his cremates will join three other crew members currently working on the space station.
NASA officials gave astronauts a formal formal certificate for flight during a two-day flight readiness review Monday and Tuesday, including systems in recognition of the crew’s Dragon spacecraft, man-made Falcon 9 rocket, and a decade-long effort to validate SpaceX’s ground.
The program was preceded by a test flight of the Crew Dragon Capsule earlier this year with NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behneken on-board.
SpaceX test-fired the Falcon 9 rocket on Pad 39A on Wednesday afternoon, a day after it was originally built. SpaceX lowered the rocket on Pad 39A to replace the components on the second-stage purification system.
A day after the Foucault 9 test-firing was delayed, NASA and SpaceX proceeded with the launch readiness review.
“So with this move from Tuesday to Wednesday, we then decided to move the LRR to Friday to make sure the team still had a few days left and to go to the data to make sure we were ready to go.” Said.
Email the author.
Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: StephenClark1.
