by Three NASA astronauts and their Russian cosmonaut counterparts flew to the Kennedy Space Center on Sunday to prepare for the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket early Friday, beginning a six-month tour of duty aboard the International Space Station.
Flying in from Johnson Space Center in Houston, Crew 8 commander Matthew Dominicco-pilot Michael Barratt, Jeanette Epps and cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin landed at the Florida spaceport’s 3-mile-long runway at 1:45 pm EST. Barratt is a veteran of two previous space flights and his three colleagues are rookies.
“Wow, it’s great to be at the Cape!” Dominic said from the runway. “I’m a kid in the candy store. … It’s an incredible time to be involved in spaceflight.”
As if to prove his point, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying 24 Starlink internet satellites from the nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station three hours after the station’s crew arrived in Florida, giving them a taste of the things to come.
A few hours later, NASA and SpaceX managers completed a flight readiness review and temporarily cleared the crew for launch.
“It’s hard to believe that it’s been 25 years since we launched the first hardware to the International Space Station and we’ve had crews there for over 23 years,” said Ken Bowersox, former shuttle commander and now chief executive of NASA. Human space flight program. “During that time, the safe launch and return of our crew members was a critical priority.
“Today’s review was very thorough. We talked about some of the technical items on the Falcon 9 rocket and the Dragon spacecraft. We talked about the readiness of the crew and the space station. At the end of the review, everyone shouted ‘go.’ “
Dominick and company plan to strap in aboard their SpaceX Crew Dragon – “Endeavour” – overnight Monday for a dress rehearsal countdown. A few hours later, SpaceX plans to test fire the Falcon 9’s first stage engines to clear the way for the first flight of the reusable booster.
Assuming the tests go well and the weather cooperates, the team will strap in for a real Thursday night and blast off from historic pad 39A at 12:04 a.m. Friday. That’s the moment the Earth’s rotation will carry the pad into the space station’s orbital plane to enable a rendezvous.
Once in space, Dominick and Barratt will monitor a series of autonomously fired thruster shots to catch up with the space station early Saturday, moving in from behind and below. After bending up to a point just in front of the outer pole, Endeavor will push in for a dock at the laboratory’s port front at 7 a.m.
Standing to welcome them who will be on board Soyuz crew Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub and NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara, who was launched to the station last September.
Also on board the space station: Crew 7 commander Jasmin MoghbeliEuropean Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen, Japanese aviator Satoshi Furukawa and cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov, launched from the Kennedy Space Center 25 August last.
After a week-long transition period to help Crew 8 flyers familiarize themselves with the ins and outs of station operations, Moghbeli, Mogensen, Furukawa and Borisov will undock March 8 and return to Earth, splashing down off the coast of Florida to put an end to it. 196-day mission.
“I truly cannot believe that this incident is almost over,” Moghbeli, a veteran Marine helicopter pilot, posted on social media. “This is what I’ve dreamed about since I was a little girl. I was afraid I’d go here and be disappointed after having such high expectations my whole life, but, if anything, I’ve exceeded this experience all the expectations I had.”
I really can’t believe this episode is almost over. This is what I dreamed of since I was a little girl. I was afraid that I would come here and be disappointed after having such high expectations my whole life but, if anything, this experience surpassed all my expectations.… pic.twitter.com/4blpTyeFSu
— Jasmin Moghbeli (@AstroJaws) February 25, 2024
The launch and docking of Crew 8 is the first in a multi-stage procedure by NASA and the Russian federal space agency Roscosmos to replace the space station’s seven long-time crew members with a new set of operators. Staff rotation is usually done twice a year.
With Crew 8 aboard the ISS and Crew 7 back on Earth, Roscosmos plans to launch veteran cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, Belarusian guest astronaut Marina Vasilevskaya and NASA veteran Tracy Dyson on March 21 aboard the Soyuz shuttle MS-25/71S.
The mission is informally called a “taxi flight,” in which a short-duration crew delivers a fresh Soyuz to the station and then flies home aboard a Soyuz nearing the end of its six-month stay. But this time around, the taxi flight is required to serve for a year stay in space by Kononenko and Chub.
Novitskiy and Vasilevskaya will return to Earth on April 2, along with NASA’s O’Hara, using the Soyuz MS-24/70S spacecraft that carried Kononenko, Chub and O’Hara to the station this September spent
Kononenko and Chub will return to Earth with Dyson in September aboard the Soyuz MS-25/71S spacecraft delivered by Novitskiy.
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