WASHINGTON – The second operational SpaceX commercial crew mission for the International Space Station will now take astronauts from Europe, Japan and the United States in mid-April.
NASA said on January 29 that it had set a date of April 20 for the crew-2 mission at the station. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and NASA astronauts Shane Kimbro and Megan MacArthur will be on board, along with European space agency Thomas Pesquet, as mission experts, respectively.
This will replace the four crew-1 astronauts who flew to the station in November on the first operational crew dragon mission. NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Waker and JXA astronaut Sochi Noguchi will return to the spacecraft in late April or early May, Crew-2 will assume launch on its current schedule.
NASA had earlier announced a launch date for March 30 for Crew-2. However, Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner commercial crew did not allow the Orbital Flight Test 2 mission to launch before March 25, delaying the mission for nearly a week. Both Starliner and Crew Dragon dock at one of the two ports on the station, one of which has been captured by the Crew-1 Crew Dragon spacecraft.
The April 20 delay also includes the launch of the Soyuz spacecraft, the Soyuz MS-18, around April 10, which will bring three Russian cosmonauts to the station, a week later with Russian cosmonaut Serge Ryazikov, the Soyuz MS-17 will land. Sergei Kud-Sverkov and NASA astronaut Kate Rubins on board.
Kenny Todd, deputy manager of the ISS program at NASA, said in a briefing on the upcoming series of spacewalks on January 22, “We will continue our preparations for the operation of some visiting vehicles around mid-March. At the station.
He did not give a timetable for the mission in the briefing. “We are still working with our Russian counterparts as well as the commercial crew program to schedule the Soyuz 64S and Crew-2 flights,” he said in a statement to SpaceNews on January 27, using NASA designations for the Soyuz MS. -18. “Both flights are currently targeting spring 2021, but specific launch dates have not yet been set.”
Two crew-1 astronauts, Hopkins and Glover, performed the first in a series of spacewalks on Jan. 27, working on the exterior of the Columbus module to support the Bartholomew external payload platform and install a new communications antenna there. On February 1 the second spacewalk will complete the installation of a new battery for the station’s power system.
Todd said in a briefing that the second pair of spacewalks is temporarily planned for late February or early March. It will follow the arrival of the Cygnus Cargo spacecraft currently scheduled for launch on February 20.
