(Trends Wide) — SpaceX and NASA have launched a new crew of astronauts on a mission to the International Space Station, kicking off a roughly six-month stay in space.
The mission, which is carrying two NASA astronauts, a Russian cosmonaut and a United Arab Emirates astronaut, lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 12:34 a.m. Thursday.
The Crew Dragon, the vehicle carrying the astronauts, separated from the rocket after reaching orbit, and is expected to spend about a day maneuvering through space before connecting with the space station. The capsule is scheduled to dock at 1:17 a.m. this Friday.
This Thursday’s launch marked the second attempt to get this mission, called Crew-6, off the ground. The first launch attempt was affected Monday by what authorities said was a clogged filter that
During the launch broadcast, officials reported that ground systems engineers made the decision to cancel the launch with less than three minutes left on the clock. Engineers said they detected a problem with a substance called triethylaluminum triethylboron, or TEA-TEB, a highly combustible fluid used to ignite the Falcon 9 rocket engines on liftoff.
The problem occurred during the “purge” process, which is intended to ensure that each of the nine Falcon 9 rocket motors is fed with enough TEA-TEB fluid when it is time for ignition. The problem arose when the fluid moved from a holding tank in the ground to a “catch tank,” according to NASA.
“After a thorough review of the data and the ground system, NASA and SpaceX determined that there was reduced flow back to the ground TEA-TEB catch tank due to a clogged ground filter,” according to an update from the NASA posted on their website early Wednesday. .
The clogged filter explained the aberration engineers had seen on launch day, NASA said.
“SpaceX teams have replaced the filter, purged the TEA-TEB line with nitrogen, and verified that the lines are clean and ready for launch,” the post said.
All about this release
This mission marks the seventh astronaut flight SpaceX has conducted on behalf of NASA since 2020, continuing the public-private effort to keep the lab in orbit fully staffed.
The Crew-6 team on board includes NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen, a veteran of three space shuttle missions, and first pilot Warren “Woody” Hoburg, as well as Sultan Alneyadi, who is the second astronaut from the United Arab Emirates. United in traveling to space. and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.
Once Bowen, Hoburg, Fedyaev and Alneyadi are aboard the space station, they will work to take over operations for the SpaceX Crew-5 astronauts who arrived at the space station in October 2022.
Photographers readjust their remote cameras to cover the launch of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket with the Endeavor crew capsule at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on March 1. Credit: John Raoux/AP
They are expected to spend up to six months aboard the orbiting laboratory, conducting scientific experiments and maintaining the two-decade-old station.
The mission comes as astronauts currently on the space station have been dealing with a separate transportation issue. In December, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, which had been used to transport cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio to the space station, suffered a coolant leak. After the capsule was deemed unsafe to return astronauts, the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, launched a replacement vehicle on February 23. It arrived at the space station on Saturday.
Working with the Russians
Russian cosmonaut Fedyaev joined the Crew-6 team as part of a shared ride agreement signed in 2022 between NASA and Roscosmos. The agreement is aimed at ensuring continued access to the space station for both Roscosmos and NASA: if the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule or the Russian Soyuz spacecraft used to transport people there experience difficulties and are put out of service, their counterpart can take over. to bring astronauts from both countries into orbit.
This flight marks Fedyaev’s first mission into space.
Despite ongoing geopolitical tensions sparked by its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia remains the United States’ main partner on the space station. NASA officials have repeatedly said the conflict has had no impact on cooperation between the countries’ space agencies.
“Space cooperation has a very long history, and we are setting the example of how people should live on Earth,” Fedyaev said during a January 24 press conference.
Bowen, the 59-year-old NASA astronaut who will serve as commander of the Crew-6 mission, also weighed in.
“I have been working and training with cosmonauts for over 20 years and it has always been amazing,” he said during the briefing. “Once you get to space, it’s just one crew, one vehicle, and we all have the same goal.”
Bowen grew up in Cohasset, Massachusetts and studied engineering, earning a BS in electrical engineering from the United States Naval Academy in 1986 and an MS in ocean engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in 1993.
He also completed military submarine training and served in the US Navy before being selected to the NASA Astronaut Corps in 2000, becoming the first submarine officer chosen by the space agency.
He previously completed three missions between 2008 and 2011, during NASA’s Space Shuttle Program, logging a total of more than 47 days in space.
“I just hope my body retains the memory of 12 years ago so I can enjoy it,” Bowen said of the Crew-6 launch.
SpaceX Crew-6 astronauts pause for a photo after arriving at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on February 21: (from left to right) Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, and NASA astronauts Warren “Woody” Hoburg and Stephen Bowen. (Credit: Kim Shiflett/NASA)
Meet the rest of the Crew-6 team
Serving as the pilot for this mission, Hoburg is a Pittsburgh native who completed PhDs in electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, before becoming an assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. He joined the NASA Astronaut Corps in 2017.
“We are going to live in space for six months. I think about six months ago and I think: okay, that’s a long time,” Hoburg told reporters about his expectations for the trip.
But, Hoburg added, “I’m looking forward to my first look at the dome,” referring to the area on the space station known to feature a large window offering panoramic views of Earth.
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Alneyadi, who served as a backup in 2019 for Hazzaa Ali Almansoori, the first UAE astronaut to travel to orbit, is now scheduled to become the first UAE astronaut to complete a long-term stay in space.
At a news conference in January, Alneyadi said he planned to bring food from the Middle East to share with his crewmates while in space. As a trained jiujitsu practitioner, he will also wear a kimono, the traditional martial art uniform.
“It’s hard to believe that this is actually happening,” Alneyadi said at a news conference after arriving at the Kennedy Space Center on February 21. “I can’t ask for more from a team. I think we are ready, physically, mentally and technically.”
What will they do in space?
During their time in space, Crew-6 astronauts will oversee more than 200 science and technology projects, including investigating how substances burn in the microgravity environment and investigating microbial samples that will be collected from outside the station. space.
The crew will host two other key missions that will pass through the space station during their stay. The first is the Boeing crew flight test, which will mark the first astronaut mission under a Boeing-NASA partnership. Scheduled for April, the flight will carry NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams to the space station, marking the latest phase of a test and demonstration program that Boeing must conduct to certify its Starliner spacecraft for astronaut missions. routine.
Then, in May, a group of four astronauts is scheduled to arrive on Axiom Mission 2, or AX-2 for short, a privately funded spaceflight to the space station. That initiative, which will deploy a separate SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, will be commanded by Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut who is now a private astronaut for the Texas-based space company Axiom, which negotiated and organized the mission.
It will also include three paying customers, similar to Axiom Mission 1, who visited the space station in April 2022, including the first Saudi Arabian astronauts to visit the orbiting laboratory. Their seats were paid for by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Both the Boeing CFT mission and the AX-2 will be important milestones, Bowen said in January.
“It’s another paradigm shift,” he said. “Those two events, big events, on spaceflight that happen during our surge, plus all the other work we have to do, I don’t think we can fully absorb it until after the fact.”
