Crew climbs to International Space Station

 

Crew climbs aboard SpaceX

NASA and SpaceX will need to thread the needle to launch the SpaceX Crew-1 Sunday evening. An approaching polar front will bring increasing clouds and therefore the threat of scattered downpours to the Space Coast.

The 45th Weather Squadron downgraded the launch probability of Sunday’s launch from 60% attend 50% only to upgrade it to 80% afterward . The Navy meteorologists are highlighting the cumulus rule, flight through precipitation and surface field rule because the primary concerns for a weather violation Sunday evening. Teams are monitoring conditions both at the Cape and downrange across the Atlantic on the spacecraft’s ascent path to orbit.

The SpaceX launch that was alleged to happen Saturday evening was pushed back 24 hours thanks to strong onshore winds. Come Sunday evening, the Space Coast can expect highs within the low 80s, light winds out of the northeast, and a 30% chance for showers which will start to taper off by 5 p.m. The launch remains scheduled for 7:27 p.m. Sunday evening and you'll catch it survive Channel 4 and News4Jax.com.

“Game day!” tweeted Mike Hopkins, the crew commander shortly before he and two other NASA astronauts -- Victor Glover and Shannon Walker -- and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi left the crew quarters for the launch complex to climb aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The mission, called Crew-1, will launch aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft on an 8.5-hour trip to the International space platform . the entire mission will span six months. It will be the primary fully-crewed SpaceX launch since the inaugural May 2020 SpaceX demonstration mission that sent astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken to the International space platform aboard a Crew Dragon capsule.

Vice President Mike Pence was expected at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for the long-awaited start of normal crew rotations aboard privately owned and operated capsules. It also marked only the second time in nearly a decade that astronauts were set to rocket into orbit from the U.S.

NASA is contracting with a personal company to move four astronauts to the ISS for a six-month stay. Saturday’s 7:49 p.m launch will mark the beginning of economic spaceflight. SpaceX expects to launch seven Dragons over subsequent 14 months: three for crew and 4 for cargo. NASA selected Boeing and SpaceX in September 2014 to move crew to the International space platform from the us .