Tag: Crew-1 Mission

Space News reports that NASA issued a request for information Wednesday “seeking information from industry on their ability to transport astronauts” to and from the International Space Station. NASA Commercial Crew Program Manager Steve Stich “said NASA was starting to consider its plans for acquiring additional commercial crew flights, given that both SpaceX was nearing the end of its CCtCap contract and the agency’s desire to operate the station through the end of the decade” during a Tuesday call with reporters.
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CBS News reported that NASA said Saturday that the launch of the SpaceX Crew Dragon, scheduled to lift off October 31, has been pushed to “early to mid November.” NASA cited “time needed to resolve a Falcon 9 engine problem that triggered a last-second launch abort last week” as the reason for the delay. The “nine first-stage engines in the Falcon 9 that will launch the Crew Dragon are presumably healthy, but engineers want to make sure they fully understand what caused the Oct. 2 launch abort with a different rocket before pressing ahead with a piloted mission.”
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CBS News reports that NASA has pushed the launch of the Crew 1 mission from October 23 to October 31. The mission will “launch four astronauts to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft,” and “will mark the first operational use of the capsule following a successful piloted test flight earlier this summer.” An October 23 launch would have been “just nine days after the October 14 launch of two cosmonauts and NASA astronaut Kate Rubins aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft and two days after NASA flier Chris Cassidy and two cosmonaut crewmates return to Earth on October 21 aboard another Soyuz.” The launch delay will give “the station crew and flight controllers in the” US, Russia, Europe, Canada, and Japan “a chance to catch their collective breath while allowing additional time to resolve any open issues.”
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The AP reports in a press conference with the four astronauts that traveled to the International Space Station via the SpaceX Dragon craft, that Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi “said Thursday that riding a Dragon capsule to orbit is…a lot more fun than NASA’s shuttles or Russian flights.” First-time astronaut Victor Glover said the experience was “truly amazing.”
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Bloomberg reports SpaceX “won formal NASA approval to carry astronauts to the International Space Station, reaching a milestone for a commercial space vehicle three months after completing a crewed test mission.” The certification “enables SpaceX’s Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket to begin regular crew rotations to the orbiting lab, with the next flight planned for Nov. 14 with four astronauts.” NASA “granted final approval after a two-day flight readiness review that concluded Tuesday, making the SpaceX vehicles the first that the U.S. agency has rated for humans since the Space Shuttle.”
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The AP reports four astronauts “arrived at Kennedy Space Center on Sunday for SpaceX’s second crew launch, coming up next weekend.” For NASA, “it marks the long-awaited start of regular crew rotations at the International Space Station, with private companies providing the lifts.” This will also “be double the number of astronauts [of] the test flight earlier this year, and their mission will last a full six months.” The crew – three American astronauts and one Japanese astronaut “are scheduled to rocket away Saturday night, providing approaching Tropical Storm Eta doesn’t interfere.”
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CBS News reports that NASA plans to launch a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Crew-1 mission to the ISS on November 14. The mission was pushed back earlier this month because a different Falcon 9 rocket suffered from an engine problem that led to a last-second abort of the mission to send a US Space Force Global Positioning System navigation satellite into orbit. On Wednesday, SpaceX Vice President for Build and Flight Reliability Hans Koenigsmann “said the rocket’s flight computer commanded the abort after detecting unusual pressure readings in the turbopump machinery used by two of the rocket’s nine first stage engines.” The “suspect engines were removed and shipped to SpaceX’s Texas flight test facility where engineers were able to replicate the pressure readings.”
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SPACE reports that SpaceX announced Monday that it is preparing to send four astronauts to the ISS on November 14. The Crew-1 mission, scheduled to launch on a Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center, “will be the first operational flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon astronaut taxi and the second Crew Dragon mission to carry passengers on board.”
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