The NASA-SpaceX astronaut mission is set to launch ‘not sooner’ than in November

• NASA’s next mission with SpaceX will begin “early-mid-November to early”, the agency announced Saturday.
• Named Crew-1, the mission will carry four astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
• The launch was to take place earlier for Halloween. The delay allows SpaceX to investigate any issues with its Falcon 9 rocket engine.
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NASA’s 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 November.

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

SpaceX canceled the scheduled launch of its Falcon 9 rocket on October 2 after seeing an unexpected increase in pressure from the gas generator.

This is not the first time SpaceX has delayed Crew-1, the company’s first official, a contracted astronaut mission for NASA. The mission was scheduled to begin in early September. It was pushed back to Halloween to better coordinate with the schedule of cosmonauts and astronauts on their way to and from the ISS.

NASA said it could get more information on the engine problem in a few days.

“Teams are actively working on the engine,” said Kathy Luder, associate administrator at NASA’s Directorate of Human Exploration and Operations. “We have to be a lot smarter in the coming weeks.”

Meet the Crew-1 team

Crew-1 includes NASA astronauts Shannon Waker, Mike Hopkins, and Victor Glover, as well as Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Sochi Noguchi. Hopkins will be the commander of the mission, glover pilot and walker and Noguchi mission expert.

Of the crew members, Glover is the only one who has not been in space before, but has logged more than 1,000,000 hours of flight experience. Noguchi is the most experienced member of the team: he has flown on Russia’s Soyuz capsule and the US space shuttle.

With launch time approaching, nine Merlin engines will lift the Falcon 9 rocket from the launch pad – and the SpaceX Crew Dragon spaceship. When the rocket goes out of the Earth’s atmosphere, its first phase will be separated from the spaceship. Its engines will re-ignite to proceed to the first stage at the pre-determined landing site. The second phase of the rocket will eventually propel the ship into ISS orbit.

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

The Crew-1 mission is now scheduled for later this fall, the late astronauts stay on the ISS for the spring of 2021 will be further surpassed with the Crew-2 mission scheduled for you.

The second team will arrive at the ISS first: NASA astronauts Kate Rubins and Russian cosmonauts Sergei Ryazikov and Sergei Kud-Sverkov are scheduled to explode on a Russian Soyuz rocket on Wednesday, October 14.

As part of NASA’s commercial crew program, SpaceX has been contracted for at least six planned ISS missions.

By partnering with SpaceX, NASA has reduced its reliance on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, which has recently cost up to 90 90 million per seat. Prior to the Demo-2 mission, NASA had not been able to launch its own astronauts on an American rocket or spacecraft since 2011, when it ended its space-shuttle program. The seat on the SpaceX capsule is estimated to cost 55 million, not including the funds NASA provided to SpaceX to develop its new crew Dragon spaceship.

Through its commercial crew program, NASA also provides funding for the development of new spaceships from Boeing. The company has launched a useless test mission of that capsule, called Starliner, but it could face technical difficulties and was unable to take the dock from the space station as planned. Boeing plans to launch a follow-up Starliner demo in December.