SpaceX launches two to the space station, allowing Starliner astronauts to return home in February

SpaceX launched a skeleton crew of two on a flight to the International Space Station on Saturday, along with supplies and a pair of empty two-person seats. Starliner Astronauts while waiting to return home in February after an unexpected eight and a half month stay in orbit.

Two days late due to high winds, rain and clouds generated by Hurricane HeleneThe SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket came to life and lifted off from Pad 40 of the Cape Canaveral Space Station at 1:17 p.m. EDT, heading away on a northeastward trajectory directly in the plane of the space station’s orbit .

Monitoring the automated ascent from inside the Crew Dragon “Freedom”, Commander Nick Hague, a veteran NASA astronaut, and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov, were making its maiden flight.

Crew Dragons normally launched with four crew members, but two Crew 9 astronauts – Stephanie Wilson and Zena Cardman, the original commander – were removed from the flight in August to free up seats to be used by Starliner Commander Barry “Butch “Wilmore and the Pilot. Sunita Williams during the Crew Dragon’s return to Earth in February.

Saturday’s launch was the first piloted spaceflight from Platform 40 and the first ever from Space Force Station for SpaceX, which has launched 14 previous Crew Dragon missions from historic Platform 39A at the nearby Kennedy Space Center.

After propelling the Falcon 9 out of the dense lower atmosphere, the first stage, making its second flight, returned to land at the Space Force station seven minutes and 40 seconds after liftoff.

Four and a half minutes later, the Crew Dragon was able to fly autonomously, kicking off a 28-hour rendezvous with the International Space Station. If all goes well, the spacecraft will dock at the laboratory’s forward port at 5:30 p.m. Sunday.

Wilmore and Williams, now space station commander, are ready to welcome Hague and Gorbounov on board, along with Soyuz MS-26/72S commander Aleksey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and NASA astronaut Don Pettit, who were launched on September 11

Hague, Gorbunov, Wilmore and Williams will replace Crew 8 Commander Matthew Dominick, Mike Barratt, Jeanette Epps and cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, who were launched on March 3 and will return to Earth around October 7 to conclude a 217-day stay in space.

In addition to bringing Hague and Gorbunov to the station, the Crew Dragon was also stocked with clothing and supplies for Wilmore and Williams, who launched June 5 during the Starliner’s first piloted test flight.

The mission was initially scheduled to last eight to ten days, but multiple helium leaks in the Starliner’s propulsion system, as well as thrust degradation from five maneuvering jets, ultimately led NASA to decide to do dropping the spacecraft earlier this month without its crew.

Instead, NASA officials opted to launch the Crew 9 Dragon with just two of its original crew members to allow the ship to return Wilmore and Williams to Earth at the end of its mission in February. By the time they land aboard the Crew 9 capsule around February 22, they will have spent more than 262 days in space.

Some have called the Crew Dragon flight a “rescue” mission. But Wilmore and Williams always had a way home, first aboard their own spacecraft, then aboard the Crew 8 Dragon and, after docking Sunday, aboard the Crew 9 Dragon. NASA chose the latter option because it least disrupts the ISS crew rotation schedule.

At a post-launch press conference, Sarah Walker, director of Dragon mission management for SpaceX, took a moment to say that “at SpaceX, we were all rooting for our NASA and Boeing friends for the success of the CFT (Crew Flight Test) mission. “.

“Bringing new human spaceflight capabilities is exciting, but these first test flights always come with lessons learned,” she said. “We still learn something every time we fly. We’ve had our share of hardware challenges.”

Transitioning from a crew of four to just two presented a different type of challenge for Hague and Gorbunov – as well as Wilmore and Williams – who have never trained for a flight in a Crew Dragon.

“We’re going to launch with a crew of two, and then we’re going to land with a crew of four,” Hague said. “And one of the unique challenges is how do you integrate the other two crew members into Dragon operations when they have received very minimal Dragon training before launch?

“The teams on the ground have not only helped us prepare, but they have already started helping Butch and Suni practice understanding what they will need to do inside the Dragon. This will be the top priority when we’re getting there, (helping them) understand what they’re going to have to do to operate as part of the Crew 9 crew.”

Hague is a Space Force colonel, a former F-16 test pilot and a combat veteran who spent 203 days in space on a previous mission. He also suffered a spectacular in-flight abort during launch aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 2018. His experience likely played a major role in NASA’s decision to move him to the revised mission commander’s seat.

Gorbunov retained his seat aboard the Crew 9 Dragon under a contract between NASA and Roscosmos, the Russian federal space agency, in which the three-seat Russian Soyuz spacecraft carries a NASA astronaut on each flight to the ISS and a cosmonaut launches on each four-seat spacecraft. Crew dragon.

This ensures that each country will always have at least one crew member aboard the laboratory, even if an emergency forces a ferry and its crew to make an unscheduled return to Earth. Gorbunov is not trained to serve as a Crew Dragon pilot, but he will sit in the pilot’s seat during launch to assist Hague.

“Essentially we are flying unmanned, and so basically the commander is responsible for ensuring the safety of the crew, the safety of the vehicle and making sure the mission is accomplished,” Hague said. “And so those responsibilities haven’t changed.

“Alex is going to work to support me during all the dynamic phases of flight and provide me with the extra eyes, extra hands that I would need and use if I had a pilot sitting next to me. So from this way, it’s not very different.