by SpaceX launched another crew of four to the International Space Station tonight (March 3).
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the four astronauts of NASA’s Crew-8 mission lifted off at 10:53 pm EST tonight (0353 GMT on March 4) from Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The rocket’s two stages separated 2.5 minutes after launch. About five minutes later, the first stage returned to Earth at Cape Canaveral, performing the company’s 204th consecutive booster landing. Then, 12 minutes and 15 seconds after liftoff, the Falcon 9’s upper stage launched the mission’s Crew Dragon capsule, named Endeavour, into low Earth orbit (LEO).
Crew-8 astronauts now on their way to the space station are Matthew Dominick (leader), Michael Barratt (pilot) and Jeanette Epps (mission specialist), as well as mission specialist Alexander Grebenkin from the Russian space agency Roscosmos. All the crew members are new to space except Barratt, who is making his third spaceflight.
“Hey, Earth! Just to let you know, it’s kind of like a rollercoaster ride with a bunch of really excited teenagers,” Barratt told mission control right after Endeavor deployed into LEO. “A big thank you to our friends and colleagues at SpaceX for the amazing trip. It’s great to be back in space again!”
Related: Meet SpaceX Crew-8 astronauts launching to the ISS
Crew-8 marks SpaceX’s 13th crewed flight overall and the eighth operational flight for NASA as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. The company has now sent a total of 50 people into orbit, although astronaut Michael López-Alegría flew twice, as commander of both the private missions Ax-1 and Ax-3, making it 49 different people.
Tonight’s launch was the first flight of this particular Falcon 9 rocket, making it the sixth time SpaceX has used a flightless rocket in a crewed launch.
On the flip side, the Endeavor capsule is a seasoned veteran. Endeavor celebrated the first crewed test flight of the Crew Dragon spacecraft on May 30, 2020, carrying NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the ISS.
Since then, Endeavor has flown the Crew-2 and Crew-6 missions for NASA and the private Ax-1 mission for the Houston-based company Axiom Space in 2022. Thus, Crew-8 marks five flights for Endeavour, the most of any Crew. Dragon, making it the “fleet leader,” said Steve Stich, manager for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, during a Feb. 28 press briefing at KSC.
But, despite how many times these capsules have flown – as well as the increasing end at which SpaceX has been sending crewed missions to the orbital laboratory – NASA refuses to let its guard down. During the same February 28 briefing, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson emphasized that crew safety is “primary” for the agency. “It’s a risky business,” he said.
“Every time we launch, it’s white-knuckle time — and especially when people are on top,” Nelson said later during the briefing. “We never want it to be so routine that it’s like getting in your car and driving on a Sunday afternoon.”
That safety culture was on display tonight before the launch. Shortly after the four astronauts were locked inside Endeavour, the mission team noticed a small crack in the thermal seal around the patch of the capsule. After much discussion and analysis, NASA and SpaceX determined that the issue was minor and would not pose any additional risk to the crew, so they went ahead with the launch.
“We estimated the square acre of this defect to be about 0.02 square inches [0.13 square centimeters]which is less than half of what we need to qualify this system with holes or cracks or other defects,” said Sarah Walker, Dragon mission managing director at SpaceX, during a press conference held about an hour after address. “About 0.05 inches [0.32 square cm]I believe, it is the limit of quality.”
In addition, the crack will be on the smaller side of Endeavor when it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere about six months from now, meaning it won’t be exposed to the capsule’s greatest heat. And the seal material will likely expand during re-entry, closing the fault anyway, Stich said during the post-launch briefing.
Tonight’s liftoff happened a few days later than expected; it was pushed back several times by bad weather.
During their six-month stay aboard the ISS, the Crew-8 astronauts will perform more than 200 scientific experiments and technology demonstrations of micrography, including research that will support human exploration of deep space.
NASA is already looking to the future with its current human science research efforts, to a time when humans could live aboard private space stations or send long-duration missions to the moon and Mars through the agency’s Artemis program.
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Similar to Crew-8’s science focus, most of the agency’s current human science research is focused not only on being successful in LEO, but also on keeping human crews safe and healthy on exploration missions, said Kristin Fabre, vice chief scientist of NASA’s Human Research Program, said Space.com. “The need to understand all the changes that are happening during exploration missions, and also to understand the changes in the human body across a diverse population, is more important than ever,” said Fabre.
When the Crew-8 quartet arrives at the space station, they will briefly join the four international Crew-7 astronauts before the final group passes the torch and sets for their departure, which will happen no earlier than March 11. 8 will also be the three members of the Russian MS-24 mission, including NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara.
SpaceX is one of two commercial companies with billion-dollar contracts to fly astronauts to and from the ISS for NASA. The other company, Boeing, aims to launch the first crewed flight of its Starliner spacecraft no earlier than April 22.
Note to the editor: This story was updated at 12:55 a.m. ET on March 4 with more information about the thermal-seal defect from the post-launch press conference.
