SpaceX rolled the Falcon 9 rocket and Cargo Dragon capsule to the launch pad over the weekend, then raised it vertical for ground crews to finish loading time-sensitive cargo into the spacecraft Monday. astronauts Frank Rubio, Steve Bowen, Woody Hoburg, and United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi. The Expedition 68 crew currently aboard the station is led by Russian commander Sergey Prokopyev, who is joined by with Russian cosmonauts Dmitri Petelin and Andrey Fedyaev, U.S. The comings and goings are occurring as the seven-person crew on the space station continues a busy slate of research experiments and maintenance tasks on the space station. Liftoff of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Cargo Dragon spacecraft from Kennedy Space Center, speeding into orbit to deliver nearly 6,300 pounds of fresh food, supplies, and experiments to the International Space Station. Last month, Russia launched a replacement Soyuz to provide a ride home later this year for the three-man crew originally expected to return to Earth on Soyuz MS-22. The Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft will land without a crew on-board after it leaked out all of its coolant fluid in December, an incident still under investigation by Russian engineers. Each mission will stay at the outpost for a week to 10 days.Īn unpiloted Northrop Grumman Cygnus supply ship is set for launch to the space station from Virginia later this spring, and Russia’s space agency plans to return a damaged Soyuz spacecraft from the complex to Earth on March 28. In the next few months, NASA and its commercial partners plan to send two short-duration crew missions to the station - the first astronaut mission on Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule, and a fully private mission with two Americans and two Saudi Arabian space fliers on a SpaceX Crew Dragon. Earlier this month, a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft launched to the space station with a fresh set of four crew members for a six-month expedition, replacing four station residents who returned to Earth on a separate Crew Dragon capsule Saturday night. This mission, known as CRS-27, continues a busy schedule for the seven-person crew on the space station, and their ground support teams on Earth. The resupply flight is SpaceX’s 27th cargo deliver mission to the International Space Station, a series of logistics launches that began in 2012 under a multibillion-dollar Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA. The Falcon 9 thundered into a mostly clear sky on a crisp evening at the Florida spaceport. Liftoff of the Dragon spacecraft atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket occurred at 8:30:42 p.m. A SpaceX Cargo Dragon spacecraft packed with nearly 6,300 pounds of fresh food, hardware, and experiments for the International Space Station lifted off Tuesday night from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, kicking off a 36-hour transit to the orbiting research complex where it will dock for a month-long mission.
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