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Reuters launches next space station crew to be launched by NASA and SpaceX

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© Reuters. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is on the launch pad on November 9, 2021, while it is ready to launch into the Kennedy Space Center International Space Station. REUTERS / Thom Baur

By Joe Skipper and Steve Gorman

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) – Elon Musk’s private rocket company, SpaceX, was due to send four other astronauts to NASA’s International Space Station on Wednesday, including a veteran spacewalker and two younger crews chosen to embark on NASA’s upcoming lunar missions.

The launch vehicle, built by SpaceX, consisting of a Crew Dragon capsule mounted on a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket, was set to take off at 9:03 p.m. (2:00 a.m. GMT Thursday) from NASA’s Cape Canaveral, Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

If all goes well, the three U.S. astronauts and the European Space Agency (ESA) crew member will arrive about 22 hours later and dock with a space station 250 miles (400 km) above Earth to launch a six-month science mission into orbit. laboratory.

But on Wednesday it raised doubts about the forecast for the launch of Cape rain and heavy clouds as expected, although NASA said its latest forecasts called for a 70% chance of good weather conditions for the air.

A weather delay has disrupted the mission from the October 31 launch window. Earlier this month a delay was attributed to an unspecified medical problem by an astronaut, which has since been fixed.

Along with three NASA astronauts on the SpaceX mission — flight commander Raja Chari, 44, mission pilot Tom Marshburn, 61, and mission specialist Kayla Barron, 34 — is 51-year-old German astronaut Matthias Maurer, an ESA mission specialist.

Chari, a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot and test pilot, Barron, a U.S. Navy submarine officer and nuclear engineer, and Maurer, a materials science engineer, are all making their first spaceflight in a Dragon vehicle called the Endurance.

The three beginners will become the 599th, 600th, and 601st humans in space, according to SpaceX.

Chari and Barron were also among the first team of 18 astronauts selected for NASA’s upcoming missions to the moon Artemis last year.

The experience of spaceflight in Earth orbit and the space station “is a great workout for those kinds of skills we’ll need to return to the moon in Artemis,” Steve Stich, NASA’s director of commercial crews, told reporters late in a speech before the flight. on Tuesday.

Marshburn, a doctor and former NASA flight surgeon, is the most experienced astronaut on the crew, having previously completed two spaceflights and four spacewalks. In 2009 he was part of a team of 13 members who helped assemble the space station and returned to the orbiting position in a 2012-2013 mission.

“CREW 3”

Wednesday’s launch, if successful, would be the fifth manned space flight SpaceX has ever achieved, following the launch of “Inspiration 4” in September, which sent a civilian crew into orbit for the first time.

The latest mission would mark the fourth crew that NASA has launched to orbit a SpaceX vehicle in 17 months, based on a public-private partnership with a rocket company founded by Musk in 2002, also the founder of electric producer Tesla (NASDAQ 🙂 Inc.

Thanks to their collaboration, it ushered in a new era for NASA last year with the first launch of American astronauts from U.S. soil in nine years, since in 2011 space shuttles stopped flying.

The team targeted in the explosion on Wednesday has been named “Crew 3” – NASA and SpaceX flew to the space station in May 2020 after a test by two astronauts.

The four “Crew 2” astronauts returned to Earth on Monday night from a record 199 days in orbit, splashing in the Gulf of Mexico near Florida, after an eight-hour trip home from the space station.

The final mission is also a follow-up to the recent famous astro-tourism flights. In July, SpaceX’s two rivals, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic Holding Inc., launched flight plans with their respective millionaire founders, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, on horseback.

Last month, 90-year-old actor William Shatner, famous for playing Captain James T. Kirk in the original 1960s Star Trek TV series, walked on a Blue Origin rocket to become the oldest person to fly into space.

The crew will be welcomed at space station 3 by the current three occupants: two cosmonauts from Russia and Belarus, and a US astronaut who shared the platform orbiting a Soyuz flight earlier this year.



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