NASA-SpaceX astronaut mission to launch ‘not before’ November

• NASA’s next mission with SpaceX will launch “no earlier than early to mid-November,” the agency announced Saturday.
• That mission, called Crew-1, will transport four astronauts to the International Space Station and vice versa.
• The launch was previously scheduled for Halloween. The delay allows SpaceX to investigate a problem with its Falcon 9 rocket engines.
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NASA’s team of four astronauts will have to wait a little longer to visit the International Space Station. The agency announced Saturday that Crew-1, its joint mission with SpaceX, will not take off until at least early to mid-November.

The mission was previously scheduled for 2:40 am ET on October 31. The latest delay allows SpaceX to test a rocket with its Falcon 9 engines during a recent test launch. The rocket’s gas generators demonstrated abnormal behavior, NASA said in a statement, although it did not specify what went wrong.

SpaceX aborted the scheduled launch of its Falcon 9 rocket on October 2 after a gas generator experienced an unexpected increase in pressure.

This isn’t the first time SpaceX has delayed Crew-1, the company’s first official contracted astronaut mission for NASA. The mission was originally scheduled to launch in September. It was delayed until Halloween to better coordinate with the schedules of other cosmonauts and astronauts coming and going from the ISS.

NASA said it could have more information on the engine problem in a matter of days.

“Teams are actively working on this find in the engines,” said Kathy Lueder, associate administrator for NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, in a statement. “We should be a lot smarter next week.”

Meet the Crew-1 team

Crew-1 includes NASA astronauts Shannon Walker, Mike Hopkins, and Victor Glover, as well as Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi. Hopkins is slated to be the mission commander, Glover the pilot, and mission specialists Walker and Noguchi.

Of the crew members, Glover is the only one who has not been to space before, but has amassed more than 3,000 hours of flying experience. Noguchi is the most experienced member of the team: he has flown in the Russian Soyuz capsule and the American space shuttle.

When launch time comes, nine Merlin engines will lift the Falcon 9 rocket, and the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, off the launch pad. When the rocket goes beyond Earth’s atmosphere, its first stage will detach from the spacecraft. Then their engines will turn on again to direct the first stage to a predetermined landing spot. The second stage of the rocket will eventually propel the spacecraft into orbit towards the ISS.

The Crew-1 team plans to remain on the ISS for the standard six months. During that time, they will conduct spacewalks, conduct science experiments, and work on regular station maintenance.

With the Crew-1 mission now scheduled for late this fall, the astronauts’ stay on the ISS will further overlap with the Crew-2 mission, scheduled for spring 2021.

Another team will arrive on the ISS before then: NASA astronaut Kate Rubins and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov are scheduled to take off on a Russian Soyuz rocket on Wednesday, October 14.

SpaceX is under contract for at least six ISS missions planned as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.

By partnering with SpaceX, NASA has reduced its reliance on Russian Soyuz spacecraft, which recently cost up to $ 90 million per seat. Prior to the Demo-2 mission, NASA had not been able to launch its own astronauts on American rockets or spacecraft since 2011, when the space shuttle program ended. A seat in a SpaceX capsule is projected to cost $ 55 million, not including funding NASA gave SpaceX to develop its new Crew Dragon spacecraft.

Through its Commercial Crew Program, NASA is also funding the development of a new Boeing spacecraft. The company launched an unmanned test mission of that capsule, called the Starliner, but it ran into technical difficulties and was unable to dock with the space station as planned. Boeing plans to launch a Starliner follow-up demo in December.