SpaceX
NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov are prepared for launch Saturday from Florida’s Area Coast aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, heading for a five-month expedition on the Worldwide Area Station.
The 2-man crew is ready for liftoff on prime of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket at 1:17 pm EDT (17:17 UTC). The climate forecast is somewhat iffy, with a 55 p.c likelihood of favorable situations for liftoff from Cape Canaveral Area Drive Station. You may watch the launch on NASA’s YouTube livestream, embedded right here.
Empty seats
This can be SpaceX’s fifteenth crew mission since 2020, and SpaceX’s tenth astronaut launch for NASA, however Saturday’s launch is uncommon in a few methods.
“All of our missions have distinctive challenges and this one, I believe, can be memorable for lots of us,” mentioned Ken Bowersox, NASA’s affiliate administrator for area operations.
First, solely two individuals will trip into orbit on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Freedom spacecraft, fairly than the standard complement of 4 astronauts. This mission, often known as Crew-9, initially included Hague, Gorbunov, commander Zena Cardman, and NASA astronaut Stephanie Wilson.
However the troubled take a look at flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft threw a wrench into NASA’s plans. The Starliner mission launched in June with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. Boeing’s spacecraft reached the area station, however thruster failures and helium leaks plagued the mission, and NASA officers determined final month it was too dangerous to being the crew again to Earth on Starliner.
NASA chosen SpaceX and Boeing for multibillion-dollar business crew contracts in 2014, with every firm accountable for growing human-rated spaceships to ferry astronauts to and from the Worldwide Area Station. SpaceX flew astronauts for the primary time in 2020, and Boeing reached the identical milestone with the take a look at flight that launched in June.
Finally, the Starliner spacecraft safely returned to Earth on September 6 with a profitable touchdown in New Mexico. But it surely left Wilmore and Williams behind on the area station with the lab’s long-term crew of seven astronauts and cosmonauts. The area station crew rigged two short-term seats with foam inside a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft at present docked on the outpost, the place the Starliner astronauts would trip dwelling in the event that they wanted to evacuate the complicated in an emergency.
NASA/Kim Shiflett
This can be a short-term measure to permit the Dragon spacecraft to return to Earth with six individuals as a substitute of the standard 4. NASA officers determined to take away two of the astronauts from the following SpaceX crew mission to release regular seats for Wilmore and Williams to trip dwelling in February, when Crew-9 was already slated to finish its mission.
The choice to fly the Starliner spacecraft again to Earth with out its crew had a number of second order results on area station operations. Managers at NASA’s Johnson Area Heart in Houston needed to resolve who to bump from the Crew-9 mission, and who to maintain on the crew.
Nick Hague and Aleksandr Gorbunov ended up maintaining their seats on the Crew-9 flight. Hague initially educated because the pilot on Crew-9, and now he’ll take Zena Cardman’s place as commander. Hague, a 49-year-old Area Drive colonel, is a veteran of 1 long-duration mission on the Worldwide Area Station, and in addition skilled a uncommon in-flight launch abort in 2018 attributable to a failure of a Russian Soyuz rocket.
NASA introduced the unique astronaut assignments for the Crew-9 mission in January. Cardman, a 36-year-old geobiologist, would have been the primary rookie astronaut with out take a look at pilot expertise to command a NASA spaceflight. Three-time area shuttle flier Stephanie Wilson, 58, was the opposite astronaut faraway from the Crew-9 mission.
The choice on who to fly on Crew-9 was a “actually shut name,” mentioned Bowersox, who oversees NASA’s spaceflight operations directorate. “They had been considering very onerous about flying Zena, however on this state of affairs, it made sense to have any individual who had not less than one flight underneath their belt.”
Gorbunov, a 34-year-old Russian aerospace engineer making his first flight to area, will take the pilot’s seat within the Crew Dragon spacecraft, though he stays formally designated a mission specialist. His remaining presence on the crew was preordained due to a global settlement between NASA and Russia’s area company that gives seats for Russian cosmonauts on US crew missions and US astronauts on Russian Soyuz flights to the area station.
Bowersox mentioned NASA will reassign Cardman and Wilson to future flights.
Operational flexibility
This may also be the primary launch of astronauts from Area Launch Complicated-40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral, SpaceX’s busiest launch pad. SpaceX has outfitted the launch pad with the gear essential to assist launches of human spaceflight missions on the Crew Dragon spacecraft, together with a greater than 200-foot-tall tower and a crew entry arm to permit astronauts to board spaceships on prime of Falcon 9 rockets.
SLC-40 was beforehand primarily based on a “clear pad” structure, with none constructions to service or entry Falcon 9 rockets whereas they had been vertical on the pad. SpaceX additionally put in slide chutes to present astronauts and floor crews an emergency escape route away from the launch pad in an emergency.
SpaceX constructed the crew tower final 12 months and had it prepared for the launch of a Dragon cargo mission to the area station in March. Saturday’s launch will show the pad’s means to assist SpaceX astronaut missions, which have beforehand all departed from Launch Complicated-39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Area Heart, a couple of miles north of SLC-40.
Bringing human spaceflight launch functionality on-line at SLC-40 provides SpaceX and NASA extra flexibility of their scheduling. For instance, LC-39A stays the one launch pad configured to assist flights of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket. SpaceX is now getting ready LC-39A for a Falcon Heavy launch October 10 with NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, which solely has a window of some weeks to depart Earth this 12 months and attain its vacation spot at Jupiter in 2030.
With SLC-40 now licensed for astronaut launches, SpaceX and NASA groups are capable of assist the Crew-9 and Europa Clipper missions with out worrying about scheduling conflicts.
Earlier this week, Hague and Gorbunov participated in a launch day costume rehearsal, once they had the chance to familiarize themselves with SLC-40. The launch pad has the identical capabilities as LC-39A, however with a barely totally different structure. SpaceX additionally test-fired the Falcon 9 rocket Tuesday night, earlier than reducing the rocket horizontal and shifting it again right into a hangar for safekeeping because the outer bands of Hurricane Helene moved by means of Central Florida.
Contained in the hangar, SpaceX technicians found sooty exhaust from the Falcon 9’s engines accrued on the skin of the Dragon spacecraft in the course of the test-firing. Floor groups wiped the soot off of the craft’s photo voltaic arrays and warmth protect, then repainted parts of the capsule’s radiators across the fringe of Dragon’s trunk part.
“It is necessary that the radiators radiate warmth within the correct solution to area, so we needed to put some some new paint on to get that again to the correct emissivity and the correct reflectivity and absorptivity of the photo voltaic radiation that hit these panels so it is going to reject the warmth correctly,” mentioned Invoice Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice chairman of construct and flight reliability.
Gerstenmaier additionally outlined a brand new backup means for the Crew Dragon spacecraft to securely splash down even when all of its parachutes fail to deploy on remaining descent again to Earth. This entails utilizing the capsule’s eight highly effective SuperDraco thrusters, usually solely used within the unlikely occasion of a launch abort, to fireside for a couple of seconds and gradual Dragon’s pace for a protected splashdown.
SpaceX
“The best way it really works is, within the case the place all of the parachutes completely fail, this primarily fires the thrusters on the very finish,” Gerstenmaier mentioned. “That primarily provides the crew an opportunity to land safely, and primarily escape the car. So it isn’t utilized in any partial situations. We are able to land with one chute out. We are able to land with different failures within the chute system. However that is solely within the case the place all 4 parachutes simply don’t function.”
When SpaceX first designed the Crew Dragon spacecraft greater than a decade in the past, the corporate wished to make use of the SuperDraco thrusters to allow the capsule to carry out propulsive helicopter-like landings. Finally, SpaceX and NASA agreed to alter to a extra typical parachute-assisted splashdown.
The SuperDracos remained on the Crew Dragon spacecraft to push the capsule away from its Falcon 9 rocket throughout a catastrophic launch failure. The eight high-thrust engines burn hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide propellants that combust when making contact with each other.
The backup possibility has been activated for some earlier business Crew Dragon missions, based on Gerstenmaier. The aptitude “offers a tolerable touchdown for the crew,” he added. “So it is a true deep, deep contingency. I believe our philosophy is, fairly than have a system that you do not use, despite the fact that it isn’t perhaps totally licensed, it provides the crew an opportunity to flee a very, actually unhealthy state of affairs.”
Steve Stich, NASA’s business crew program supervisor, mentioned the emergency propulsive touchdown functionality can be enabled for the return of the Crew-8 mission, which has been on the area station since March. With the arrival of Hague and Gorbunov on Crew-9—and the extension of Wilmore and Williams’ mission—the Crew-8 mission is slated to depart the area station and splash down in early October.
