SpaceX to Launch Crew-1 Mission on Halloween
HOUSTON (NASA PR) — NASA and SpaceX now are targeting 2:40 a.m. EDT Saturday, Oct. 31, for the launch of the agency’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission with astronauts to the International Space Station.
The new target date will deconflict the Crew-1 launch and arrival from upcoming Soyuz launch and landing operations. This additional time is needed to ensure closure of all open work, both on the ground and aboard the station, ahead of the Crew-1 arrival. The increased spacing also will provide a good window of opportunity to conduct additional testing to isolate the station atmosphere leak if required.
SpaceX continues to make progress on preparations of the Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket, and the adjusted date allows the teams additional time for completing open work ahead of launch.
Astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker of NASA and Soichi Noguchi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will be carried to the station on the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft on a Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The launch will be the first time an international crew will fly aboard a NASA-certified, commercially-owned and operated American rocket and spacecraft from American soil.
Following the launch, the Crew-1 astronauts are scheduled to arrive at the space station for a six-month science mission aboard the orbiting laboratory.
NASA is in the final stages of the data reviews needed ahead of certification following the agency’s SpaceX Demo-2 test flight. Teams from NASA and SpaceX will provide an update on the process during upcoming media briefings beginning at 11 a.m. EDT on Tuesday, Sept. 29, hosted from the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
For more information about the mission, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew.
13 responses to “SpaceX to Launch Crew-1 Mission on Halloween”
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go go go
I bet they dress up as astronauts.
The guys in the middle gets screens. The folks on the ends just get windows and they keep saying, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”
Middle guy: “Don’t make me turn this capsule around.”
Window person: “I want candy.”
Middle guy: “We have candy at the station.”
You’re cracking me up.
It will probably slip again due to weather. It seems to be a bad year for Atlantic storms.
Well a lot can happen in a month. Predicting the weather a month ahead is like reading tea leaves.
True, but it seems to be the pattern for the Atlantic this year given they already ran out of names for the storms.
So, they just go to the space station, spend there a few months and then return home? What is the reason they go there?
All kinds of research.
(and of course a good chunk of station maintenance)
What did you expect them to do?
Where is Starliner?
It sure will be interesting to see the crew capsule shuffle they will be doing when OFT-2 gets there. According to NASA ISS manager Kenny Todd on today’s Crew-1 presser, some of the Crew-1 guys will climb back into Crew Dragon Resilience, which will need to undock from the Node 2 Forward IDA and maneuver to the Zenith IDA and re-dock there to make room for Starliner.
Ought to be a fun day… Assuming Starliner makes it into the right orbit this time. 😉
That’s going to depend entirely on whether or not the OFT-2 Starliner is judged ready to fly before Crew-1 departs in late April or early May. I don’t rate the probability of that happening very high.
Heh. It is a race between the Dragon Crew-2 mission starting their ISS tour and Starliner OFT-2 getting all the reviews done after many remedial tasks for a return to flight. However this is Boeing with their crappy track record in Human spaceflight. Will not be surprise in a schedule slip to the right.
But if more issues crops up during the orbital tests that OFT-1 didn’t attempted. Then Crewed Dragon will likely do the third and possibly the fourth commercial crew missions before Starliner CFT visits the ISS. However any repeat or even partial repeat of the OFT-1 fiasco will likely call into doubt Boeing’s ability to field a human rated space transport service. Especially after Boeing get 60% more money than SpaceX for the same task along with the additional $287.2M for assure crew transport service by 2019.
We already have Dragon Crew-3 mission manifested for late 2021. It will be interesting if SpaceX finishes their allotted 6 operational crew missions early. Will NASA start up new commercial crew program or fly out remaining Starliner missions first?
It now seems inevitable that SpaceX will use up its six contracted-for NASA crew missions to ISS well before Boeing. Heck, it’ll use up half of them before the end of next year.
It could well be that NASA will do the same thing they did with the original CRS contracts – extend them by adding on more missions. I haven’t tried looking for the contracts, but, in view of prior CRS experience, I wouldn’t be surprised but what there are option and extension provisions built into them already.