The items are in place for SpaceX’s Crew-9 astronaut mission, which is ready to launch this week.
NASA’s Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov arrived at Kennedy House Heart (KSC) in Florida on Saturday (Sept. 21). The duo will fly to the Worldwide house Station (ISS) aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, which is ready to launch atop a Falcon 9 rocket on Thursday (Sept. 26) from Pad 40 at close by Cape Canaveral House Power Station.
“Hague and Gorbunov will quarantine on the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Constructing at Kennedy,” NASA officers wrote in an replace on Saturday. “Whereas there, they will conduct a dry gown rehearsal of the mission, sleep shift to align their resting and waking durations with mission necessities, rehearse flight procedures, in addition to make calls to household and buddies.”
Crew-9’s Dragon, named Freedom, can be on web site, SpaceX introduced by way of X on Friday (Sept. 20), in a submit that shared two pictures of the capsule.
Associated: Meet the SpaceX Crew-9 astronauts launching to the Worldwide House Station Sept. 26
As its title suggests, Crew-9 would be the ninth long-duration astronaut mission that SpaceX flies to the ISS for NASA. These flights normally carry 4 folks; two crewmembers had been taken off Crew-9 so Freedom may haul NASA’s Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams again right down to Earth in February on the mission’s finish.
Wilmore and Williams arrived on the ISS in early June on the first-ever crewed mission of Boeing’s Starliner capsule. They had been supposed to come back residence on Starliner per week or so later, however NASA prolonged the mission repeatedly to review and troubleshoot thruster points that the capsule skilled on its solution to the orbiting lab.
The company finally determined to convey Starliner again to Earth uncrewed, which occurred on Sept. 7, and depart Wilmore and Williams on the ISS till Crew-9 wraps up. As a part of that call, Williams was named commander of the station’s present Expedition 72.
Crew-9 would be the first astronaut mission ever to launch from Pad 40 at Cape Canaveral and simply the second crewed effort to fly from the House Power station total, after Starliner’s June 5 liftoff. (KSC, which is correct subsequent door, has hosted many crewed launches over the many years.)
Hague, Crew-9’s commander, will turn into the primary lively U.S. House Power Guardian to launch to house within the historical past of the navy department. He lived aboard the ISS from March 2019 to October 2019, however the House Power wasn’t established till December of that 12 months.
Crew-9 would be the first spaceflight for Gorbunov, a mission specialist who was chosen by Roscosmos, Russia’s house company, in 2018.