The launch comes as NASA and Russia proceed to analyze what induced two Russian spacecraft — one designed for human spaceflight, the opposite for cargo solely — to spring oddly comparable coolant leaks inside a few months of one another whereas connected to the area station. Russia launched a substitute capsule to the station on Thursday that’s to retrieve a pair of Russian cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut. That capsule docked Saturday night.
Since Might 2020, when it despatched a pair of NASA astronauts in a take a look at flight to the station, SpaceX has flown a collection of human spaceflight missions which have included professionally skilled astronauts representing their governments in addition to a number of non-public residents.
In 2014, when NASA awarded contracts to Boeing and SpaceX to design and construct spacecraft to fly NASA’s astronauts to the orbiting outpost, most within the aerospace group thought Boeing would fly first. However it hasn’t gone that means.
Whereas SpaceX has continued to supply a dependable service of crew and cargo to the station, Boeing has struggled to get off the bottom. However Boeing hopes it can lastly launch its first crew in a take a look at flight to the station as early as April. That will give NASA two suppliers, and a backup in case of firm falters — a degree pushed residence just lately by the Russian spacecraft leaks.
The launch of Crew-6 — which incorporates NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg, United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev — comes simply two days after the Russian substitute spacecraft arrived on the station. Final month, Russia determined that its Soyuz MS-22 capsule was unsafe to return its crew to Earth after it sprang a coolant leak from a radiator loop. One other Russian spacecraft, this one designed for cargo solely, not astronauts, additionally suffered an identical leak. Engineers from NASA and Russia are persevering with to analyze what induced the issues.
Talking to reporters late Saturday, Dana Weigel, NASA’s area station deputy program supervisor, mentioned that “it’s nonetheless an ongoing evaluation. They’re nonetheless taking a extremely shut have a look at all the knowledge they’ve on each spacecraft to attempt to perceive if there’s any widespread trigger or anything that might have been a causal issue and having these two radiator panel leaks.”
She added that Russian officers at Roscosmos, the Russian area company, “are sharing the knowledge with us.” Roscosmos additionally did one other set of inspections of the rescue spacecraft launched final week to retrieve NASA astronaut Frank Rubio in addition to Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin. “They inspected it,” she mentioned. “They seemed on the radiators, the photo voltaic arrays, and so they couldn’t discover something in any respect anomalous. However that doesn’t imply they’re accomplished investigating.”
Whereas Boeing remains to be pushing towards its first human spaceflight mission with its Starliner spacecraft, SpaceX has sped forward, launching plenty of crews to orbit, because it continues a brisk and unparalleled cadence that included 61 orbital launches final yr, most of them for its Starlink web satellite tv for pc constellation. This yr, the corporate says it’s pushing for as many as 100 flights.
“However above all, the precedence is the crew flights and crew security,” mentioned Benji Reed, SpaceX’s senior director of human spaceflight packages. “And likewise assembly our obligations to make sure the crew rotation on the area station. That can all the time take priority over any of the opposite flights.”
The corporate is now gearing as much as launch Starship, its huge, totally reusable two-stage rocket, which might change into essentially the most highly effective ever to fly. The Starship launch, which remains to be awaiting approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, may come as early as subsequent month from the corporate’s facility in South Texas on the Gulf of Mexico.
NASA can be watching to see how the automobile performs. The area company is investing $2.9 billion within the automobile and intends to make use of it to ferry astronauts to and from the floor of the moon as a part of its Artemis program.
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