Three American astronauts and one Russian astronaut will take off overnight from Saturday to Sunday for the International Space Station, as part of a normal crew rotation aboard the flying laboratory.
The liftoff of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled for 11:16 pm local time (04:16 GMT Sunday) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
However, due to only 40% favorable weather conditions for the launch, it may be postponed.
The Dragon capsule, which is meant to carry the crew to the top of the rocket, has been used for four previous manned missions.
This time the four passengers are members of Crew-8, the eighth regular orbiting mission provided by SpaceX for NASA.
“It seems almost routine to the untrained eye, that SpaceX sends them up there one after another,” NASA boss Bill Nelson admitted at a press conference this week.
American Michael Barrett is the only Crew-8 astronaut to visit the International Space Station (ISS).
However, it will be the first space trip for two other Americans – Matthew Dominique and Jeanette Epps – as well as Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gribionkin.
NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos, which together operate the ISS, have established an astronaut exchange program, in which each transports crew members from the other country.
The program was maintained despite the war in Ukraine, and the ISS is now one of the few subjects of cooperation between Washington and Moscow.
Crew-8 members will join the seven people already on the ISS.
After a handover period of a few days with the four members of Crew-7 – an American, a Dane, a Japanese and a Russian – they will return to Earth in their own Dragon capsule.
Crew-8 must conduct more than 200 scientific experiments over the course of six months at the permanently inhabited flying laboratory for 23 years.
While the first years of the station’s life were devoted to its construction, astronauts could now devote more time to science.
But there’s also a decline in the station’s age: NASA and Roscomos are monitoring a “leak” whose flow has increased recently, Joel Montalbano, head of the ISS program at NASA, said this week.
Located at the end of the Russian module, it is where the Russian Progress spacecraft docks with the ISS. A hatch is currently permanently closed to isolate the leak from the rest of the station.
Published March 2 at 6:32 pm, AFP
