The ISS Crew 10 mission is preparing to launch Wednesday in the early
evening, 7:48 PM EDT, from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy
Space Center on Cape Canaveral. Lately the mission has been most often mentioned as replacing Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams' and enabling their ride home from their eight-day turned eight-month Starliner mission. That's not quite right; they won't return home in the Dragon capsule Endurance launching Crew 10; they're returning with the other two astronauts from the Crew-9 Dragon Freedom launched last summer.
The Dragon spacecraft supporting this mission previously flew NASA’s Crew-3, Crew-5, and Crew-7 missions to and from the space station. Following stage separation, Falcon 9’s first stage will land on Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The crew consists of NASA astronauts Crew-10 Commander Anne McClain, Pilot Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov. For an on-time launch, the Crew-10 foursome would dock to the orbital outpost at 6 a.m. on Thursday and begin their long-duration mission as Expedition 72 flight engineers.
Image assembled from individual images on the SpaceX mission page. Image credit: NASA
NASA does these crew swaps roughly every six months, and one of the routine steps is that the new Expedition crew overlaps with the old crew for around a week to make a smoother fransfer to the new expedition. We'll know more about when and where the reentry will take place over the coming week. The NASA ISS Blog gives more info on exactly what the crew has been doing.
EDIT TO ADD (3/12 @ 7:30 PM EDT - 0030 UTC on 3/13): And... scrubbed tonight
Wonder what the Russians think about riding up on a SoaceX rocket. Remember in its early days Elon went to Russia in an attempt to buy their rockets or engines and they ran him around all over, essentially not taking SpaceX seriously.
ReplyDeleteNot sure I've seen anything from Cosmonauts, but every NASA astronaut I've heard of prefers the Crew Dragon to the Soyuz. Cosmonauts might have better awareness of criticizing the Russian programs.
DeleteSeems the rocket industry there is partly controlled by oligarch interests, imagine you do not want to cross those guys. Still, the Russians have much to be proud of, they build some pretty fine rocket engines. They appear to be able to accomplish much with far less money invested in comparison to US legacy aerospace, but then, its probably differences in how corruption functions and its effects in each case.
DeleteI am pleased as punch that governments do not interfere that crews are composed of persons from different countries. Space should be kept neutral.
ReplyDeleteHydraulic problem with the strong-back nixed the launch.
ReplyDeleteThis is really wild to watch, the way the flare moves, it looks like a living thing. The imagery from the solar observer sat is free to everyone, they even provide software to view the images in various frequencies. Hi-def crystal clear imagery.
here:
https://www.universetoday.com/articles/watch-the-sun-unleash-a-solar-flare
Those videos of flares are quite often the cool things to watch. You need a highlight reel because they can sit there for a long time shivering and shuddering before they erupt.
DeleteYeah, they mentioned the v-clips where condensed from many hours of watching a flare erupt. Very science fiction-ey movie special effects looking. The way the magnetic flux effects the plasma is like nothing else in nature far as I have looked at, so it strikes me as very strange, unusual appearing. Fascinating really.
DeleteSpaceX is doing something else to the general scope of human space activity. They are creating an entirely different generation of new astronauts, could the old NASA/Military guard be on its way out, in a manner of speaking, or in a sense superseded by a kind of industrialization orientated astronaut, much younger, trained up to literally be multi shift crews working in manufacturing products, mining operations, infrastructure, maintenance, industrial labs, all the things manufacturing is composed of on earth, just geared to the space environments on the moon, in zero G, involved in mining asteroids, and the support services that all requires, from shipping to assaying to engineering to medical to general work force.
ReplyDeleteIts got to happen if space is going to work, not going to be many space activity from now on I believe, at least in the earth/moon system, (same probably for asteroidal mining presence), if it is not made profitable, and highly profitable at that, its possible space manufacturing and mining operations could become the most lucrative activities in human history, bery much so more profitable, once we figure out how to accomplish such, and its gonna require the youngsters to "git er done". What kind of astronauts dose that all create is the question for the future, right now, cause how far out you must project space operations involving human presence. Thats what i been giving thought to as SpaceX and other private ventures proceed.
And what happens when space presence goes truly private? NASA gets left for dust in such a dynamic situation, because its got a little feet of clay syndrome being such a government entity. Furthermore, what happens, if for instance, corporations, even individuals, are out of the control of the FAA, I mean space is big, really big, it would seem ludicrous, perpostrous even, such a governmental entity attempts to extend its tenticles, say out to a family living in tunnels its bored out under the moons regolith running a moon farm, or bored out a metal or water ice asteroid, out beyond mars orbit, its gonna stick its nose in those peoples business? Like to see that happen, heh.