That’s why NASA has postponed the launch of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon shuttle
The crew's launch to the International Space Station was canceled at the last minute. NASA and SpaceX will retry the launch on March 2
The launch of SpaceX's Crew Dragon shuttle with four astronauts on board has been postponed to reach the International Space Station (ISS).
Originally scheduled from NASA's Kennedy Space Center for Sunday (February 26), today it should have left at 7.45 am Italian. With about two minutes remaining in the countdown, the launch was canceled due to a technical problem with the Falcon 9 rocket's ignition system. Unfavorable weather conditions on February 28 pushed the next launch attempt to March 2, pending resolution of the technical problem, reports a note from the US Space Agency.
This mission is expected to mark the seventh astronaut flight SpaceX has made for NASA since 2020.
Additionally, the launch of Crew Dragon 6 comes as astronauts currently on the ISS grapple with a transportation problem. In December, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, used to carry two cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut to the ISS, suffered a coolant leak . After the spacecraft was deemed unsafe for returning astronauts, Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, launched a replacement vehicle on Feb. 23. It arrived at the ISS on Saturday.
All the details.
NASA'S CREW-6 MISSION WITH SPACEX'S DRAGON
The Crew-6 mission is to bring Americans Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg, United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Al Neyadi and Russian Andrey Fedyaev to the ISS, who will join the seven colleagues already on board. Al Neyadi will be the second UAE astronaut to ever travel to space and the first to launch from US soil as part of an ISS team.
Once Bowen, Hoburg, Fedyaev and Alneyadi are aboard the ISS, they will work to take over the operations of the SpaceX Crew-5 astronauts who arrived at the space station in October 2022.
For SpaceX it will be the sixth manned operational mission for NASA and the ninth overall.
THE LAUNCH OF SOYUZ MS-23
Meanwhile, a Russian spacecraft is docked on a mission to return a crew stranded on the International Space Station (ISS) to Earth. This was reported by the Russian space agency Roscosmos early Sunday. Soyuz MS-23 lifted off Friday from the Baikonour space center in Kazakhstan. This will bring back Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin and US astronaut Francisco Rubio.
The three were supposed to finish their mission in March. They were stranded in space after their Soyuz MS-22 capsule's cooling system started leaking two months ago. The Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft will be reported unmanned next month.
In late December, NASA was considering using SpaceX, the only company that can currently carry astronauts into space from American soil, as a backup to the Soyuz mission.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/ecco-perche-la-nasa-ha-rimandato-il-lancio-della-navetta-crew-dragon-di-spacex/ on Mon, 27 Feb 2023 16:07:55 +0000.