NASA announced Monday that the first operational crew rotation mission to the International Space Station on the SpaceX crew Dragon spacecraft has been unveiled for the next hour of Halloween, eight days after the previous plan.
The crew Dragon spaceship is scheduled to explode from a Falcon 9 rocket off Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 2:40 a.m. EDT (0640 GMT) on Oct. 31, the space agency said.
If the mission takes off as scheduled, the crew capsule will either land with the International Space Station a day later. Late 31st or Nov. Will dock at the beginning of 1.
Commander Michael Hopkins will lead the four-man crew. It will be joined by pilot Victor Glover and mission experts Shannon Walker and Sochi Noguchi, who will embark on a six-month journey to the space station.
The mission, known as Crew-1, was originally scheduled to launch on October 23. NASA said the crew 1 would be unveiled with a delay of Oct. 31 and the three-person Soyuz crew would be docked with a scheduled arrival on October 14. Departure and landing of the station crew on and off the space station on 21 October.
NASA said, “This additional time is needed to ensure the closure of open works, both on the ground and at the station, before the arrival of Crew-1.”
The delay will also give engineers more time to perform additional tests to isolate small air leaks inside the space station’s pressurized cabin. The leak is “very small,” said Greg Dorth, NASA’s manager of the space station’s external integration office.
“Leaks are not the safety of the crew or the safety of the station issue,” Dorthe said Monday. “It’s a very, very small leak. It has an effect on our consumables, but we plan for it. The leak will be addressed as we continue the investigation. “
The three occupants of the space station spent three days separately in the Russian part of the complex in August Gust, and the crew spent the second week in the Russian section of the station last week to help ground teams separate the leak.
“As of this morning, there is no clear indication of where the leak is,” Dorthe said Monday. “Teams are still looking at and evaluating the data, and we’ll continue to find these very small leaks.”
NASA said SpaceX “continues to make progress on Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket preparations, and the adjusted date allows teams extra time to complete open work before launch.”
Hopkins and his crew completed training on Crew Dragon Systems last week at SpaceX headquarters in Hthorn, California. “We’ve got a license to fly!” Glover tweeted.
The crew-1 is complete with Dragon Rider training. We have a license to fly! Thank you for making this possible. We hope to make you proud! pic.twitter.com/HA2AYz77Bj
– Victor Glover (@WickGlover) September 26, 2020
The Crew-1 mission follows a successful test flight called Demo-2, in which NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnekan went to the space station on a two-month mission to unload a human-rated capsule before it could be cleaned regularly by officials. Mission.
Hurley and Behanke launched on May 30 and returned to Earth on August 2.
Starting with Crew-1, SpaceX plans to launch multiple Crew Dragon missions each year with NASA astronauts, international crew members and private passengers paying the fare. NASA is in the final stages of formally certifying crew dragons for operational missions.
Noguchi also tweeted last week that Crew-1 astronauts had completed final water spaceflight training at NASA’s Neutral Buenos Aires Laboratory near the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Astronauts train in a large pool to follow weightless conditions in orbit.
# NASA #SpaceX # Crew1 The final spacewalk underwater training is complete, with flying colors! Thanks to all the divers and support operators # NBL And instructors # JSC! pic.twitter.com/CzJo9ZLeB5
– NOGUCHI, Soichi 口 口 聡 – （の ぐ ち）） (Astro_Soichi) September 25, 2020
NASA plans to host a series of press conferences on Tuesday to preview the Crew-1 mission.
Launch Qt. The four-person crew ready to launch 31 will be on the space station around April 2021, while the other crew is ready to dock with a new four-team team of Dragon astronauts. Hopkins and his crew will sail into the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico by parachute to Splashdown in their crew dragon capsule.
SpaceX’s crew Dragon spacecraft has launched two new U.S. spacecraft. Is one of the spaceships built to carry astronauts from the space station. Developed under a millionaire dollar agreement with NASA, the commercial crew Dragon Capsule is also set to take private astronauts into low-Earth orbit, starting next October with a 10-day mission, which is expected to include actor Tom Cruise.
Boeing’s Starliner Crew Capsule is designed for the same type of mission as the Crew Dragon. But the Starliner program has resulted in a delay, an unmanned test flight of the Starliner spacecraft ended prematurely in December 2019, when a software error prevented it from docking with the space station.
NASA and Boeing have agreed to launch a second Starliner test flight without astronauts to ensure software issues are resolved before the first Starliner demonstration mission with crew members.
The second unmanned Starliner test flight is currently scheduled to launch in January with the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket. If it goes well, Boeing could be ready to fly another Starliner to the space station in early June 2021, along with test pilot Chris Ferguson and NASA astronauts Mike Fink and Nicole Mann.
NASA will then be able to allow Boeing’s Starliner to start a regular trip from the space station. NASA’s agreements with Boeing and SpaceX include provisions for the space station’s six crew rotation missions by 2024.
The Russian Soyuz mission will continue to transport space station crews in the coming years as new US vehicles arrive online. A Russian technician at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan reads the Soyuz MS-1 spacecraft for takeoff at 45:45 a.m. EDT (0545 GMT) Oct. A six-month stay on the space station with 14 Russian cosmonauts Sergei Ryazikov, Sergei Kud-Sverkov and NASA astronaut Kate Robbins.
Ryazikov, Kud-Sverkov and Rubins will dock with the space station three hours after the liftoff, joined by station commander Chris Cassidy and his Russian crumates Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Wagner.
Cassidy, Ivanishin and Wagner have been on the space station since April. They are scheduled to depart from the station on October 21 in their Soyuz MS-16 capsules and return to Earth.
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