SpaceX crew launch to ISS postponed

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch to the Worldwide House Station was postponed on Monday, with officers citing issues with floor methods.

The SpaceX Dragon Crew-6 mission was scheduled to depart the Kennedy House Middle in Florida at 1:45 am (0645 GMT), carrying two NASA astronauts, a Russian cosmonaut and the second Emirati to voyage to space.

However simply two minutes earlier than lift-off, the launch was known as off, or “scrubbed”.

“Right now’s #Crew6 launch has been scrubbed as a result of a difficulty with floor methods,” NASA posted on Twitter.

SpaceX stated shortly after that it had begun unloading gas from the rocket and the crew would disembark.

The launch might be rescheduled for a later date.

NASA’s Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg, Russia’s Andrey Fedyaev and Sultan al-Neyadi of the United Arab Emirates are to spend six months on the orbiting station.

Neyadi, 41, would be the fourth astronaut from an Arab nation and the second from the oil-rich UAE to journey to space; his compatriot Hazzaa al-Mansoori flew an eight-day mission in 2019.

Neyadi described the upcoming mission as a “nice honor.”

Hoburg, the Endeavour pilot, and Fedyaev, the Russian mission specialist, may even be making their first space flights.

Fedyaev is the second Russian cosmonaut to fly to the ISS aboard a SpaceX rocket. NASA astronauts fly usually to the station on Russian Soyuz craft.

House has remained a uncommon venue of cooperation between Moscow and Washington because the Russian offensive in Ukraine positioned the 2 in sharp opposition.

Such exchanges have continued regardless of these tensions.

Bowen, a veteran of three space shuttle missions, stated politics hardly ever come up whereas in space.

“We’re all professionals. We preserve centered on the mission itself,” the commander stated. “It is all the time been an incredible relationship we have had with cosmonauts as soon as we get to space.”

Whereas aboard the ISS, the Crew-6 members will conduct dozens of experiments together with finding out how supplies burn in microgravity and researching coronary heart, mind and cartilage features.

The present crew is the sixth to be transported by a SpaceX rocket to the ISS. The Endeavour capsule has flown into space thrice.

NASA pays SpaceX to ferry astronauts to the ISS roughly each six months.

The space company expects Crew-6 to have a handover of a number of days with the 4 members of Crew-5, who’ve been on the ISS since October. Crew-5 will then return to Earth.

Rescue capsule

Additionally aboard the ISS are cosmonauts Dmitry Petelin and Sergei Prokopyev, in addition to NASA astronaut Frank Rubio.

They’d been scheduled to return house on March 28 however the cooling system of their Soyuz MS-22 capsule was broken by a tiny meteoroid in December whereas docked with the ISS.

An uncrewed Russian Soyuz capsule, MS-23, took off on Friday from Kazakhstan to deliver the three astronauts house. They’re now scheduled to return to Earth in September.

Development of the ISS started in 1998 at a time of elevated US-Russia cooperation following the Chilly Conflict space race.

Russia has been utilizing the getting old however dependable Soyuz capsules to ferry astronauts into space because the Nineteen Sixties.

However in recent times, Russia’s space program has been beset by a litany of issues which have led to the lack of satellites and autos.

© 2023 AFP