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[…] another Falcon 9 rose from Space Launch Complex (SLC)-4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., laden with the highly secretive NROL-85 payload for the National Reconnaissance Office. Attention then returned to the Space Coast, where a 53-strong Starlink batch rose from SLC-40 on […]
[…] Larry Connor of the United States, Eytan Stibbe of Israel and Canada’s Mark Pathy flew the first all-private research mission to the ISS, under the auspices of Houston, Texas-based AxiomSpace, […]
[…] kicked off in fine style with the launch of the multi-payload Transporter-4 mission from SLC-40 on the first day of the month. But this flight proved no “April Fool”, for it was followed from KSC’s Pad 39A on the 8th by […]
[…] Nine days later, another Falcon 9 rose from Space Launch Complex (SLC)-4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., laden with the highly secretive NROL-85 payload for the National Reconnaissance Office. Attention then returned to the Space Coast, where a 53-strong Starlink batch rose from SLC-40 on 21 April. And earlier this week, a fifth Falcon 9 of the month successfully delivered NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Bob “Farmer” Hines and Jessica Watkins, together with Italy’s Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency (ESA), to the ISS aboard the brand-new Dragon Freedom. […]
[…] sixth Falcon 9 in a single calendar month, as the six-times-flown B1062 booster—which just three weeks ago lifted Dragon Endeavour to orbit on her historic Ax-1 mission—roared aloft Friday evening from storied Space Launch Complex (SLC)-40 at Cape Canaveral Space […]
@SpaceX has flown a personal-best-beating 6th launch of April & set a new launch-to-launch turnaround record for #Falcon9 of 21 days.
The post SpaceX Scores Sixth Launch of April, Achieves Turnaround Record first appeared on AmericaSpace.
Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The Starlink 4-16 mission will launch SpaceX’s next batch of 53 Starlink broadband satellites. Follow us on Twitter.
SpaceX is counting down to launch of a Falcon 9 rocket at 5:27 p.m. EDT (2127 GMT) Friday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. A booster that previously flew just 21 days ago will haul 53 more Starlink internet satellites into space.
There is an 80% chance of favorable weather for liftoff Friday on SpaceX’s 151st Falcon 9 mission, and the 43rd flight primarily dedicated to carrying Starlink satellites. The primary weather concern is with cumulus clouds.
The first stage booster — tail number B1062 — will aim for landing on the drone ship “Just Read the Instructions” positioned roughly due east of Charleston, South Carolina, about eight-and-a-half minutes after launch.
SpaceX teams at Cape Canaveral rolled the Falcon 9 rocket from its hangar to pad 40 at Cape Canaveral and raised it vertical early Friday. Beginning at T-minus 35 minutes, the launch team will oversee loading of kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants into the Falcon 9 through an automated, computer-controlled sequencer.
Helium pressurant will also be flowed into the rocket. In the final seven minutes of the countdown, the Falcon 9’s Merlin main engines will be thermally conditioned for flight through a procedure known as “chilldown.” The Falcon 9’s guidance and range safety systems will also be configured for launch at 5:27 p.m.
The 229-foot-tall (70-meter) Falcon 9 rocket will pivot to fly northeast from Cape Canaveral over the Atlantic Ocean.
The rocket will surpass the speed of sound in about one minute, then shut down its nine main engines two-and-a-half minutes after liftoff. The booster will detach, fire pulses from cold gas thrusters, and extend titanium grid fins to help steer the vehicle back into the atmosphere, and use braking burns with its main engines to slow down for landing on the drone ship around 400 miles (650 kilometers) downrange.
This booster is set to launch on its sixth mission, following a debut flight in November 2020 with a GPS navigation satellite, and another GPS launch in June of last year. It flew again Sept. 14 with the all-private Inspiration4 crew mission, and carried a Starlink mission to space Jan. 6, before its most recent flight April 8 on Axiom’s Ax-1 commercial crew mission to the space station.
Continuing the flight into orbit, the Falcon 9’s upper stage engine will shut down nearly nine minutes into the mission, moments after the landing of the first stage downrange in the Atlantic Ocean.
After coasting across the North Atlantic, over Europe and the Middle East, then across the Indian Ocean, the upper stage will reignite its engine for a brief two-second firing to maneuver the 53 Starlink satellites into the proper orbit for separation.
The Falcon 9’s guidance computer aimed to release the flat-panel satellites just shy of one hour after launch in an orbit between 189 miles and 197 miles (304 by 317 kilmeters) above Earth, with an inclination of 53.2 degrees to the equator.
The Starlink satellites will extend solar arrays and use on-board ion thrusters to reach their operational orbit at an altitude of 335 miles (540 kilometers), where they will enter commercial service for SpaceX.
After Thursday’s mission, SpaceX will have launched 2,441 Starlink satellites to date, including spacecraft that were decommissioned or suffered failures. More than 2,100 of those satellites are in orbit and functioning as of Thursday, according to a list maintained by Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist who closely tracks spaceflight activity.
Read our mission preview story for more details.
ROCKET: Falcon 9 (B1060.12)
PAYLOAD: 53 Starlink satelllites (Starlink 4-16)
LAUNCH SITE: SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida
LAUNCH DATE: April 29, 2022
LAUNCH TIME: 5:27:10 p.m. EDT (2127:10 GMT)
WEATHER FORECAST: 80% chance of acceptable weather; Low risk of unfavorable conditions for booster recovery
BOOSTER RECOVERY: “Just Read the Instructions” drone ship east of Charleston, South Carolina
LAUNCH AZIMUTH: Northeast
TARGET ORBIT: 189 miles by 197 miles (304 kilometers by 317 kilometers), 53.2 degrees inclination
LAUNCH TIMELINE:
MISSION STATS:
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Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a Rocket Lab Electron rocket from Launch Complex 1A on Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand carrying 34 small picosatellites and CubeSats. Text updates will appear automatically below. Follow us on Twitter.
Rocket Lab’s live video webcast begins approximately 20 minutes prior to launch, and will be available on this page.
With a mission Friday to deploy more Starlink internet satellites, SpaceX will try to shave nearly a week off the company’s previous record for the shortest time between two launches of the same Falcon 9 booster.
The Falcon 9 rocket scheduled to blast off Friday from Cape Canaveral will be powered by a first stage that launched just 21 days before, with Axiom’s Ax-1 private astronaut mission to the International Space Station. SpaceX is poised to break the 27-day rocket turnaround record set last year.
Fifty-three more Starlink internet satellite are fasted on top of the Falcon 9 rocket set for liftoff from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Launch is timed for an instantaneous opportunity at 5:27 p.m. EDT (2127 GMT) Friday. Forecasters from the U.S. Space Force, which runs the launch range at Cape Canaveral, predict an 80% chance of favorable weather for liftoff Friday afternoon.
The mission — designed Starlink 4-16 — will be the 151st launch of a Falcon 9 rocket since SpaceX debuted its workhorse vehicle June 4, 2010, and the 43rd Falcon 9 flight primarily dedicated to hauling Starlink internet relay stations into orbit. The launch will be SpaceX’s 17th mission of the year, and the sixth Falcon 9 launch in April, SpaceX’s most ever in a single month.
SpaceX has ramped up its launch cadence this year. Elon Musk, the company’s founder and CEO, has said SpaceX aims to complete 60 Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy flights in 2022, nearly double the 31 missions accomplished last year. The launch rate is sustained by SpaceX’s reuse of rocket boosters and payload fairing shells. Just one of the 17 Falcon 9 flights so far this year has used an all-new rocket.
The booster flying on Friday’s mission — tail number B1062 — landed on SpaceX’s drone ship “A Shortfall of Gravitas” in The Atlantic Ocean after launching with the Ax-1 missions. The drone ship returned the rocket to port for inspections and minor refurbishment, then SpaceX integrated the booster stage with a new second stage and rolled the rocket into the hangar at pad 40.
Inside the hangar, SpaceX technicians mated the rocket with its payload of 53 Starlink satellites, already encapsulated inside the Falcon 9’s nose shroud. SpaceX planned to roll the fully assembled Falcon 9 to the pad just north of the hangar Thursday, then raise it vertical for final launch preps.
Like most recent Starlink missions, the Falcon 9 will target a near-circular orbit at an average altitude of 192 miles (310 kilometers) for deploying of the 53 flat-packed spacecraft, each weighing a bit more than a quarter ton.
The Falcon 9 rocket will head northeast from Cape Canaveral with nine kerosene-fueled Merlin 1D engines generating 1.7 million pounds of thrust. Two-and-a-half minutes after liftoff, the booster will separate from the second stage and begin its descent back to the drone ship “Just Read the Instructions” in the Atlantic Ocean east of the Carolinas.
The booster, on its sixth trip to space, will arc to an altitude of nearly 400,000 feet before coming down for a propulsive vertical landing on the floating platform about eight-and-a-half minutes after launch.
The second stage will ignite its single vacuum-optimized engine for two burns to place the Starlink satellites into the correct orbit for separation. Deployment of the Starlink satellites will occur south of Australia about 59 minutes into the mission.
The Falcon 9 will release the satellites in an orbit with an inclination of 53.2 degrees to the equator, one of five orbital “shells” used in SpaceX’s global internet network.
The Starlink satellites will extend solar arrays and use on-board ion thrusters to reach their operational orbit at an altitude of 335 miles (540 kilometers), where they will enter commercial service and begin beaming broadband signals to consumers.
Going into Friday’s mission, SpaceX has launched 2,388 Starlink satellites to date, including spacecraft that were decommissioned or suffered failures. More than 2,100 of those satellites are in orbit and functioning as of Thursday, according to a list maintained by Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist who tracks spaceflight activity.
That makes the Starlink fleet the largest satellite constellation in the world, by a factor of nearly five over the internet satellite fleet owned by rival OneWeb.
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Russian cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev and Denis Matveev ventured outside the International Space Station on Thursday for a planned six-and-a-half hour spacewalk to begin unlimbering the European Robotic Arm.
The cosmonauts opened the hatch to the Poisk airlock at 10:58 a.m. EDT (1458 GMT), marking the official start of the spacewalk. The excursion is the 250th spacewalk since 1998 in support of space station assembly and maintenance.
The spacewalk is the fifth Artemyev’s cosmonaut career, and the second for Matveev. Artemyev, Matveev, and crewmate Sergey Korsakov arrived at the space station last month on a Soyuz spacecraft.
Artemyev and Matveev’s previous spacewalk on April 18 began work to activate the European Robotic Arm, a 37-foot-long (11.3-meter) manipulator delivered to the station last July with Russia’s Nauka science module. The cosmonauts connected a control panel for future crews to command the robotic arm, then removed protective covers from various robot arm components, and installed handrails on the Nauka module.
On Thursday’s spacewalk, the cosmonauts plan to remove and jettison thermal blankets from the arm, and release launch locks that firmly held the arm in its folded configuration for the journey to the space station last year. The launch locks are located at the elbow and end effectors, or hands, of the European Robotic Arm.
Those tasks will free up the manipulator for movement. Artemyev and Matveev will monitor the first commanded movements of the robotic arm.
Artemyev is wearing a Russian Orlan spacesuit with red stripes. Matveev wears a spacesuit with blue stripes.
The European Robotic Arm is the third system of its kind at the station, joining the Canadian and Japanese robot arms on the U.S. section of the research complex.
Like the Canadian robotic arm, the European arm has the ability to “inchworm” between grapple fixtures, or base points, at multiple locations on the space station. While the Canadian arm is positioned on the U.S. segment of the complex, the European arm has access to the Russian modules.
With the launch locks released, Artemyev and Matveev will monitor the arm as it translates between base points Thursday in a “double walkoff” maneuver using both ends of the arm.
The cosmonauts working outside the station Thursday will also install more handrails on the robotic arm, and inspect a Kurs rendezvous radar antenna on the Russian Prichal module for a possible obstruction from debris. The Kurs system is used to help navigate Soyuz and Progress crew and cargo ships to the space station.
Full-scale development of the European Robotic Arm began in 1996, and the arm was in storage more than a decade to wait for Russia’s Nauka lab module to be ready for launch. The European arm was originally planned for launch on a NASA space shuttle.
“ERA is a bit different than the other manipulators that already on the station,” said Philippe Schoonejansm, the European Space Agency’s ERA project manager. “It can be fully preprogrammed in advance, which is helpful. It can be operated from external control panel, which the others do not have. So even when you’re doing a spacewalk, you can control ERA by just seeing and operating this control panel. But also it can operated from inside using only a laptop, so it doesn’t need any joysticks.”
ESA says the arm capable of carrying a load of more than 17,000 pounds, or 8 metric tons, with a precision of one-fifth of an inch (5 millimeters).
The next spacewalk to continue activating the European Robotic Arm is scheduled for late May.
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Three Americans and one Italian astronaut floated into the International Space Station late Wednesday after a nearly 16-hour commute aboard a SpaceX crew capsule from a launch pad in Florida, ready for multi-month expedition performing experiments, maintenance, and upgrades.
SpaceX’s fourth operational crew flight for NASA, known as Crew-4, continues the regular rotation of astronauts to and from the space station.
Commander Kjell Lindgren and three crewmates took off from the Kennedy Space Center at 3:52 a.m. EDT (0752 GMT) Wednesday on top of a Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX’s Dragon Freedom spacecraft ferried the four-person crew to the station, using a series of orbit adjustment burns to match the altitude and velocity of the science outpost.
The rendezvous culminated in an automated docking with the zenith, or space-facing, port on the station’s Harmony module at 7:37 p.m. EDT (2337 GMT). That wrapped up a 15-hour, 45-minute journey from the launch pad in Florida, the fastest transit time for a U.S. mission from liftoff until docking at the space station.
Russian crew and cargo missions have reached the station in as few as three hours after launch.
The favorable position of the space station in its orbit at the time of the Crew-4 launch early Wednesday allowed SpaceX’s Dragon Freedom spacecraft to reach the complex several hours faster than previous Dragon missions.
Dragon breathes fire as it nears the International Space Station.
Draco thrusters are guiding the crew capsule from a position under the station to the docking axis above the Harmony module.
Docking is about an hour away.
Watch live: https://t.co/S7O0NSVRZf pic.twitter.com/SrbRuwvxSx
— Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) April 27, 2022
Lindgren, a veteran of a 141-day expedition on the station in 2015, was joined on Crew-4 mission by pilot Bob Hines, European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, and NASA mission specialist Jessica Watkins.
Hines and Watkins are flying in space for the first time. Both joined NASA’s astronaut corps in 2017. Cristoforetti, a native of Milan, Italy, spent 199 days in orbit on a space station mission in 2014 and 2015.
Crew-4 is a commercial SpaceX flight under the auspices of the company’s multibillion-dollar contract with NASA. The newly-arrived astronauts will replace the Crew-3 astronauts, who have lived and worked on the station since November.
The Crew-4 mission is SpaceX’s seventh human spaceflight mission overall, including four operational flights for NASA, two fully commercial private astronaut missions, and the first Dragon crew test flight in 2020.
The space agency announced in February it awarded three additional crew flights to SpaceX on Dragon spacecraft, a contract extension valued at nearly $900 million covering the Crew-7, Crew-8, and Crew-9 missions.
SpaceX’s Dragon Freedom spacecraft is now within the approach corridor for International Docking Adapter 3, the zenith port on the space station’s Harmony module.
Range is now 170 meters — 557 feet — to the International Space Station.https://t.co/S7O0NSWpON pic.twitter.com/cQcy3KMQ8r
— Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) April 27, 2022
NASA has a similar contract with Boeing for six operational crew missions on the Starliner spacecraft, which is still in its test phase and has not yet flown astronauts. The next Starliner test flight, without a crew, is scheduled for launch to the space station May 19.
Before Boeing and NASA can move forward with the Starliner test flight, the astronauts on the space station will complete a nearly week-long handover before Crew-3 and Crew-4 missions.
Commander Raja Chari, pilot Tom Marshburn, and mission specialists Matthias Maurer and Kayla Barron launched on the Crew-3 mission last November. They will ride SpaceX’s Dragon Endurance spacecraft back to Earth next week, leaving the Crew-4 astronauts at the station with three Russian cosmonaut crewmates.
Departure of the Crew-3 mission is scheduled for May 4, but the schedule could change as officials monitor weather conditions in SpaceX’s seven splashdown zones off the coast of Florida. Managers will watch for storms, winds, and high seas before committing the crew for return to Earth.
The arrival of the Crew-4 mission comes three days after another SpaceX crew capsule — Dragon Endeavour — undocked from the space station with a retired NASA astronaut and three wealthy businessmen. That mission, managed by a Houston-based company named Axiom Space, was the first fully private crew to visit the station. Previous space tourists or private astronauts flew to the station on government-led missions.
The Crew-4 astronauts have boarded the International Space Station after launch and docking earlier today.
The station will host a crew of 11 people over the next few days, before the departure and splashdown of the Crew-3 mission.https://t.co/S7O0NSVRZf pic.twitter.com/XzUe8hatrW
— Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) April 28, 2022
The busy season of space station traffic began in March with arrival of three Russian cosmonauts on a Soyuz spacecraft and the return to Earth of the previous Soyuz crew.
Amid the comings and goings, the crew at the space station has continued research experiments and maintenance. Russian cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev and Denis Matveev were asleep at the time of the Crew-4 docking Wednesday, resting up before a planned spacewalk Thursday to continue activating and outfitting the European Robotic Arm outside the Nauka module.
The Crew-4 mission flew on the fourth and final planned spacecraft in SpaceX’s fleet of Dragon crew capsules. The astronauts on the Crew-4 mission named the new spacecraft “Freedom.”
Dragon Freedom joins sister ships Endeavour, Resilience, and Endurance in SpaceX’s inventory.
The Crew-4 mission is slated to last until at least mid-September, shortly after the launch of Crew-5, NASA’s next astronaut mission with SpaceX.
Aside from working with experiments and operating the space station, the Crew-4 astronauts plan to perform at least two U.S. spacewalks to prepare for the arrival of new power-generating solar arrays. Cristoforetti may also have a chance to head outside the station on a spacewalk in a Russian spacesuit to work on the European Robotic Arm.
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NASA’s flying drone on Mars has recorded aerial views of debris left behind from the landing of the Perseverance rover last year, showing remarkable details of the craft’s supersonic parachute and part of its aeroshell.
The robotic Ingenuity helicopter flew over the parachute and back shell April 19 after cameras on the Perseverance rover itself spotted the hardware from a distance. The rover will not be guided to take an up-close look at the hardware, but the Ingenuity helicopter captured 10 pictures of the chute and back shell from an altitude of about 26 feet (8 meters).
NASA engineers working on the Mars Sample Return program, which aims to bring Martian rock specimens back to Earth, requested the flyover by the Ingenuity helicopter. The 10 color images will allow engineers to examine the condition of the back shell and parachute, providing new insights into how they performed when the Perseverance rover arrived on Mars on Feb. 18, 2021.
“Perseverance had the best-documented Mars landing in history, with cameras showing everything from parachute inflation to touchdown,” said Ian Clark, an engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and former Perseverance systems engineer.
“But Ingenuity’s images offer a different vantage point,” said Clark, now in charge of the ascent portion of the Mars Sample Return mission. “If they either reinforce that our systems worked as we think they worked or provide even one dataset of engineering information we can use for Mars Sample Return planning, it will be amazing. And if not, the pictures are still phenomenal and inspiring.”
Ingenuity visited the wreckage on its 26th flight, which occurred on the one-year anniversary of the small helicopter’s first hop on the Red Planet. Ingenuity became the first aircraft to fly in the atmosphere of another planet. It was originally slated to fly five times as a technology demonstration experiment, but now NASA is using the helicopter as an aerial scout to assist the Perseverance rover with its science mission.
“NASA extended Ingenuity flight operations to perform pioneering flights such as this,” said Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity’s team lead at JPL. “Every time we’re airborne, Ingenuity covers new ground and offers a perspective no previous planetary mission could achieve. Mars Sample Return’s reconnaissance request is a perfect example of the utility of aerial platforms on Mars.”
Mars rovers have examined their leftover debris before. NASA’s Opportunity rover encountered its heat shield in 2005, about a year after landing on the Red Planet. But Ingenuity offered engineers a chance to inspect the landing hardware without sending the rover itself to look at it, allowing Perseverance to continue its scientific campaign.
The back shell was part of the structure that housed the Perseverance rover during the journey from Earth to Mars. The aeroshell shielded the robot from aerodynamic forces and heat as the spacecraft plunged into the Martian atmosphere at a velocity of nearly 12,500 mph (20,000 kilometers per hour).
The rover jettisoned the parachute and back shell about a minute before landing in Jezero Crater, a basin once covered in liquid water fed by a river flowing down from nearby highlands. The rover then slowed for landing with the help of a rocket pack, which lowered Perseverance to the surface of Mars on cables and bridles in a technologically complex method NASA calls the “sky crane.”
The mission’s supersonic parachute measured 70.5 feet (21.5 meters) wide when fully inflated. But the rarefied atmosphere on Mars meant the rover couldn’t slow for landing using aerodynamic braking alone, so the chute was jettisoned to free up the craft to finish the landing with its rocket-powered descent stage.
The back shell measured nearly 15 (4.5 meters) in diameter, and NASA said the debris impacted the Martian surface at about 78 mph (126 kilometers per hour).
“The back shell’s protective coating appears to have remained intact during Mars atmospheric entry,” NASA said. “Many of the 80 high-strength suspension lines connecting the backshell to the parachute are visible and also appear intact.”
The parts of the parachute visible to the Ingenuity helicopter appeared to show no signs of damage from the supersonic airflow it encountered during descent last year. NASA said engineers will spend several weeks analyzing the imagery before making any concrete conclusions.
The one-ton, plutonium-powered Perseverance rover is on a mission to collect samples for return to Earth, the first leg of the multi-launch Mars Sample Return program. NASA and the European Space Agency plan to send a send a series of spacecraft to Mars later this decade to fetch the samples gathered by Perseverance, launch them off of the Red Planet and into space, then bring the specimens back to Earth for analysis in sophisticated terrestrial labs.
The Ingenuity flight April 19 lasted 159 seconds and occurred around midday local time on Mars. The 4-pound (1.8-kilogram) rotorcraft accomplished several maneuvers to crisscross the area around the parachute and back shell, covering 1,181 feet (360 meters) in total.
In its 26 flights so far, Ingenuity has logged more than 49 minutes aloft and traveled 3.9 miles (6.2 kilometers), according to NASA.
“To get the shots we needed, Ingenuity did a lot of maneuvering, but we were confident because there was complicated maneuvering on flights 10, 12, and 13,” said Håvard Grip, chief pilot of Ingenuity at JPL. “Our landing spot set us up nicely to image an area of interest for the Perseverance science team on Flight 27, near ‘Séítah’ ridge.”
Ingenuity and Perseverance are now operating in a more rugged region in a dried-up river delta where water once flowed into Jezero Crater. The rover completed the first phase of its mission close to where it landed on the Red Planet last year, then drove across the Martian landscape to the new area of operations, covering about 3 miles (5 kilometers) in 31 days, the quickest traverse by any Mars rover in history.
Perseverance arrived at the delta region earlier this month. The rover will collect more rock samples there, and store them for eventual return to Earth. Scientists are eager to analyze the specimens in search for clues about the environment on Mars billions of years ago, when the planet was warmer, wetter, and could have harbored life.
Ingenuity will help mission planners determine which routes the rover should take to explore the fan-shaped delta.
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Live coverage of the docking of NASA’s Crew-4 mission at the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. Text updates will appear automatically below; there is no need to reload the page. Follow us on Twitter.
Four astronauts rocketed into a clear predawn sky early Wednesday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, riding SpaceX’s newest Dragon spacecraft — named “Freedom” — to kick off a planned four-and-a-half month science expedition at the International Space Station.
Commander Kjell Lindgren, flanked by Pilot Bob “Farmer” Hines and mission specialists Samantha Cristoforetti and Jessica Watkins, took off from historic pad 39A at the Florida spaceport at 3:52:55 a.m. EDT (0752:55 GMT) Wednesday, vaulting into the sky atop a column of bright orange flame from the Falcon 9 rocket’s nine Merlin main engines.
Within about a minute, the Crew Dragon Freedom spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket were flying faster than the speed of sound, heading northeast from Kennedy over the Atlantic Ocean to line up with the trajectory of the space station.
The Falcon 9 hit its marks on the nine-minute climb into orbit, shedding its no-longer-needed first stage and igniting a single engine on the upper stage to place the Dragon Freedom spacecraft at the right altitude and velocity to start the mission, known as Crew-4, SpaceX’s fourth operational crew rotation flight to the station.
The upper stage deployed the Dragon Freedom capsule at an altitude of roughly 120 miles (200 kilometers) about 12 minutes after liftoff. A few minutes earlier, live video from SpaceX’s booster stage showed the rocket landing on a drone ship parked several hundred miles downrange in the Atlantic Ocean.
The on-target landing completed the booster’s fourth flight to space. The reusable rocket — tail number B1067 — previously launched a space station cargo mission, a crew mission, and a Turkish communications satellite.
For Lindgren and his crewmates, the early morning launch was the first phase of a 16-hour flight to the space station, where they will replace the Crew-3 astronauts, who have lived and worked at the complex since November.
“Freedom, LD, I hope you enjoyed your ride,” SpaceX’s launch director radioed the crew shortly after launch. “It’s been an honor flying you Kjell, Farmer, Samantha, Jessica. Have a safe journey to space station. Say hi to Crew-3 for us, and we look forward to seeing you when you get home. Indeed, the dream is alive.”
“From Freedom, we want say a big thank you to SpaceX, the commercial crew program and specifically the Falcon 9 team for a great ride,” Lindgren replied from space. “It is a privilege to get to fly this new vehicle, the Crew Dragon Freedom, to orbit. Huge thanks to the team who assembled and prepared her for flight. We’re feeling great and looking forward to the view.”
Liftoff of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon Freedom spacecraft, hauling four astronauts to orbt for a four-and-a-half month science expedition on the International Space Station. https://t.co/in18pmR7z5 pic.twitter.com/ZsZTf0t42e
— Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) April 27, 2022
The launch of the Crew-4 mission occurred just 39 hours after SpaceX’s previous crew flight — a private mission for the Houston-based company Axiom Space — splashed down off the coast of Georgia to wrap up 17 days in orbit.
The Axiom flight was the first of its kind to visit the space station — a purely commercial venture without any government leadership role. A retired NASA astronaut and three paying passengers flew to the complex to perform scientific experiments, public outreach events, and to enjoy experiencing the microgravity environment more the 250 miles above Earth.
“If we look tired, it’s maybe because we are a bit tired,” said Kathy Lueders, head of NASA’s space operations mission directorate. “What a busy week in NASA space operations. Less than 40 hours ago we had our first private astronaut mission, and the team carefully went through that data and then set up for the Crew-4 launch.”
Crew-4 is a commercial SpaceX flight under the auspices of the company’s multibillion-dollar contract with NASA. It is SpaceX’s seventh launch of astronauts, and the company’s fourth operational crew rotation flight to the space station.
The space agency announced in February it awarded three additional crew flights to SpaceX on Dragon spacecraft, a contract extension valued at nearly $900 million covering the Crew-7, Crew-8, and Crew-9 missions.
NASA has a similar contract with Boeing for six operational crew missions on the Starliner spacecraft, which is still in its test phase and has not yet flown astronauts. The next Starliner test flight, without a crew, is scheduled for launch to the space station May 19.
The Crew-4 astronauts planned to get some sleep Wednesday before waking up in the mid-afternoon hours (EDT) to begin preparations for docking a the space station. The automated link-up with the station’s Harmony module is scheduled for 8:15 p.m. EDT Wednesday (0015 GMT Thursday).
A few hours later, the crew members will open hatches and enter the space station, joining the seven astronauts and cosmonauts already living on the research outpost.
Dragon Freedom is safely in orbit, on the way to the International Space Station with astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines, Samantha Cristoforetti, and Jessica Watkins. https://t.co/in18pmR7z5 pic.twitter.com/41vqeBhcoW
— Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) April 27, 2022
NASA commander Kjell Lindgren is flying on his second space mission after spending 141 days in orbit on a long-duration expedition at the station in 2015. Cristoforetti, a European Space Agency astronaut from Milan, Italy, flew more than 199 days on the space station in 2014 and 2015.
Hines and Watkins are first-time space fliers. Both were selected to join NASA’s astronaut corps in 2017.
The flight plan calls for handover of at least five days between the new Crew-4 astronauts and the outgoing Crew-3 astronauts, who are tentatively scheduled to depart the station around May 4, targeting a splashdown off the coast of Florida around May 5, wrapping up their nearly six-month mission.
Commander Raja Chari, pilot Tom Marshburn, and mission specialists Matthias Maurer and Kayla Barron launched on the Crew-3 mission last November. They will ride SpaceX’s Dragon Endurance spacecraft back to Earth, leaving the Crew-4 astronauts at the station with three Russian cosmonaut crewmates.
The Dragon Freedom spacecraft is SpaceX’s fourth — and likely final — human-rated Dragon spacecraft. The crew announced last month the new capsule would be named “Freedom.”
“We want to celebrate what we see as fundamental human right, and also to celebrate what the unfettered human spirit is capable of,” Lindgren said in a pre-flight press conference. “And it’s also just kind of a reflection of how far we’ve come.”
The name also honors Freedom 7, the capsule that carried astronaut Alan Shepard to suborbital space on the first U.S. human spaceflight mission in May 1961.
“To see that first launch of Freedom 7, and to see where we are today is really a remarkable thing,” Lindgren said. “So we wanted to celebrate freedom for a new generation of space fliers.”
The new Dragon Freedom spacecraft looks like the other three capsules in SpaceX’s fleet of reusable vehicles. But it comes with some upgrades, including an improvement in the voice communications system.
The astronauts also heralded an addition that would be appreciated by anyone on a long road trip.
“We now have USB charging ports in this spacecraft,” Lindgren said. “This is something that goes to low Earth orbit and is going to get us to the space station, and I’m talking about USB ports.”
The charging ports will allow the astronauts to top up power on their tablets, which contain reference materials for the flight up to the space station.
“It’s the little things. Next, the coffeemaker,” Lindgren joked.
“No wifi though!” Hines retorted.
The crew will have internet access after arriving at the space station. Communications on-board the Dragon spacecraft goes through SpaceX’s mission control in Hawthorne, California.
Lindgren, 49 and a father of three, was born in Taiwan and grew up in England and in the United States, then attended the U.S. Air Force Academy, where was a member of the school’s parachute team. He later earned a medical degree and became a NASA flight surgeon before his selection to join the NASA astronaut corps in 2009.
After completing his first space mission in 2015, Lindgren was assigned as the backup to NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken on SpaceX’s first Dragon test flight to carry people into orbit.
Hines is a 47-year-old lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force. He was born in North Carolina and grew up in Pennsylvania, then served as an F-15E fighter pilot and graduated from Air Force Test Pilot School. Hines continued to fly F-15s as a test pilot and deployed overseas in support of special forces operations, while also working as a test pilot for the Federal Aviation Administration.
NASA hired Hines as a research pilot based in Houston in 2012, and the agency selected him to become an astronaut in 2017.
Watkins, a 33-year-old planetary geologist, will become the first Black woman to live and work on the space station for a long-duration mission.
“This is certainly an important milestone, I think, both for our agency and for the country,” Watkins said. “I think it’s really just a tribute to the legacy of the Black women astronauts that have come before, as well as to the exciting future ahead.”
She was born in Maryland and considers Lafayette, Colorado, as her hometown. She earned a doctorate in geology from UCLA, then joined the science team working on NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover mission, participated in system design for the Perseverance rover and the Mars Sample Return mission.
Watkins was one of 18 astronauts NASA named in 2020 for potential future assignments to moon missions under the agency’s Artemis lunar program. She said her work at the station, among other tasks, will help develop technology and robotics for the Artemis program, along with experiments in radiation protection and human health and biological research, all areas geared toward enabling longer and farther missions into space.
“As NASA pivots to the moon and Mars, that pivot point is the space station,” Hines said. “So all that technology is going to the space station, where we develop it and refine it before we pivot and send it off to the moon and eventually on to Mars.”
Cristoforetti, 44, has logged more time in space than any of her crewmates. Like Lindgren, she launched on first space mission aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket and spacecraft.
She holds a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Technical University of Munich. She was a fighter pilot in the Italian Air Force before ESA selected her as part of its 2009 astronaut class.
The astronauts will perform spacewalks and conduct experiments during their time on the space station. Cristoforetti may have a chance to head outside the station in a Russian spacesuit to help activate the European Robotic Arm.
The Crew-4 mission is scheduled to end in mid-September with a re-entry and splashdown off the coast of Florida. NASA’s Crew-5 mission is set for launch to the space station in early September.
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[…] following last November’s undesirable “indirect handover” between the outgoing Crew-2 and incoming Crew-3 which left the U.S. Operational Segment (USOS) reduced for a few days to just a single U.S. […]
[…] handovers” of crews, following last November’s undesirable “indirect handover” between the outgoing Crew-2 and incoming Crew-3 which left the U.S. Operational Segment (USOS) reduced for a few days to just a […]
Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on NASA’s Crew-4 mission. The Crew-4 mission will carry astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines, Samantha Cristoforetti, and Jessica Watkins to the International Space Station. Follow us on Twitter.
Four astronauts will strap into their seats on SpaceX’s Dragon Freedom spacecraft and ride a Falcon 9 rocket into orbit early Wednesday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, beginning a 16-hour chase of the International Space Station. Liftoff from pad 39A is set for 3:52 a.m. EDT (0752 GMT).
Kjell Lindgren, a veteran of 141 days in orbit on a previous flight, commands the Crew-4 mission to the space station. Pilot Bob Hines and mission specialist Jessica Watkins, both spaceflight rookies, will join Lindgren on the mission. European Space Agency astronaut rounds out the crew.
The four-person crew is set to begin a mission lasting nearly five months at the space station, performing experiments and maintenance, conducting spacewalks, and continuing nearly 22 years of continuous human presence on the orbiting outpost.
The mission will mark the seventh launch of astronauts by SpaceX since the first Dragon flight to carry people. It is SpaceX’s fourth operational crew rotation flight for NASA under a multibillion-dollar contract.
The astronauts have spent the last week at the Kennedy Space Center undergoing final training and flight preps, and spending time with family before their multi-month expedition off the planet.
“I plan to take a very long luxurious shower on that last day before launch,” said Cristoforetti, an Italian-born flier poised for her second trip to space.
Assuming the launch occurs Wednesday morning, the Crew-4 astronauts are scheduled to arrive at the station for docking at 8:15 p.m. EDT Wednesday (0015 GMT Thursday).
Lindgren, Hines, Cristoforetti and Watkins will receive briefings from the four astronauts they are replacing on the station.
The flight plan calls for handover of at least five days between the new Crew-4 astronauts and the outgoing Crew-3 astronauts, who are tentatively scheduled to depart the station around May 4, targeting a splashdown off the coast of Florida around May 5, wrapping up their nearly six-month mission.
Commander Raja Chari, pilot Tom Marshburn, and mission specialists Matthias Maurer and Kayla Barron launched on the Crew-3 mission last November. They will ride SpaceX’s Dragon Endurance spacecraft back to Earth, leaving the Crew-4 astronauts at the station with three Russian cosmonaut crewmates.
The Dragon Freedom spacecraft is the fourth, and likely last, human-rated vehicle to join SpaceX’s fleet of reusable Dragon capsules. It joins Dragon Endeavour, Dragon Resilience, and Dragon Endurance in the company’s inventory.
The Crew-4 mission will launch on a Falcon 9 booster — tail number B0167 — flown on three previous missions. The booster stage launched for the first time last June 3 on a cargo mission to the space station, then flew again Nov. 10 with the Crew-3 mission. Most recently, the booster launched Dec. 18 with the Turksat 5B communications satellite.
There’s a 90% chance of acceptable weather at the Kennedy Space Center for liftoff Wednesday morning, and a low-to-moderate risk of bad conditions along the Falcon 9’s ascent corridor heading northeast over the Atlantic Ocean. SpaceX monitors conditions downrange to ensure weather and sea states would be safe for a splashdown of the Dragon spacecraft in the event of an in-flight abort caused by a rocket failure.
The rocket’s first stage will land on the drone ship “A Shortfall of Gravitas” parked in the Atlantic Ocean about 340 miles (545 kilometers) downrange from the launch pad.
Read our mission preview story for details on the Crew-4 launch.
ROCKET: Falcon 9 (B1067.4)
PAYLOAD: Crew Dragon Freedom on the Crew-4 mission
LAUNCH SITE: LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida
LAUNCH DATE: April 27, 2022
LAUNCH TIME: 3:52:55 a.m. EDT (0752:55 GMT)
LAUNCH WINDOW: Instantaneous
WEATHER FORECAST: 90% probability of acceptable weather
BOOSTER RECOVERY: “A Shortfall of Gravitas” drone ship
LAUNCH AZIMUTH: Northeast
TARGET ORBIT: Approximately 130 miles by 143 miles (210 by 230 kilometers); Inclination of 51.6 degrees to the equator
DOCKING AT ISS: 8:15 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, April 27 (0015 GMT on Thursday, April 28)
LANDING DATE: September 2022
LAUNCH TIMELINE:
MISSION STATS:
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The timeline below covers major vehicle and crew activities during the Crew-4 countdown and rendezvous with the International Space Station. All times assume liftoff of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 3:52:55 a.m. EDT (0752:55 GMT) on Wednesday, April 27. All times in Eastern Daylight Time (GMT-4).
TUESDAY, APRIL 26
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27
THURSDAY, APRIL 28
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Just 39 hours after SpaceX returned four private astronauts to Earth, the company’s next crew launch for NASA is set for early Wednesday from Florida, with a planetary geologist, a medical doctor, and former U.S. and Italian fighter pilots heading to the International Space Station.
The four astronauts assigned to NASA’s Crew-4 mission had to wait a few extra days to begin their flight to the station. SpaceX and NASA delayed the launch of the Crew-4 flight to wait for the departure of another crew capsule from the station, a return which itself was pushed back a week by a scheduling constraint and weather concerns.
But SpaceX’s Dragon Endeavour capsule finally undocked from the station Sunday, clearing the docking port needed for the arrival of the Crew-4 mission. Taking advantage of a break in high winds, Dragon Endeavour and its four-man crew safely splashed down off the coast of Georgia at 1:06 p.m. EDT (1706 GMT) Monday, ending the first all-private, non-government mission to the International Space Station.
The 17-day flight for Axiom Space, a Houston-based company, was the first fully commercial mission of its kind to visit the orbiting research complex. It’s a pathfinder for future private crew flights to the station, and could ultimately lead to development of a privately-owned human-tended outpost in low Earth orbit.
The splashdown cleared the way for launch of the Crew-4 mission on SpaceX’s Dragon Freedom spacecraft — a new capsule in the company’s fleet — from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 3:52 a.m. EDT (0752 GMT) Wednesday. A Falcon 9 rocket powered by a thrice-flown reusable first stage booster will send the Dragon capsule into orbit.
Commander Kjell Lindgren, veteran of one previous expedition on the space station, leads the four-person crew awaiting liftoff Wednesday. He will be joined by pilot Bob Hines and mission specialist Jessica Watkins, two first-time fliers from NASA’s astronaut corps. European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, a native of Italy who spent nearly 200 days in orbit in 2014 and 2015, rounds out the crew.
“We are really in a golden era of space exploration,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “We’ve seen the first private astronaut mission that has successfully returned, now a 39-hour turnaround and we’re going to launch Crew-4.”
If the launch takes off early Wednesday, the Crew-4 astronauts are scheduled to dock at the Harmony module on the space station at 8:15 p.m. EDT Wednesday (0015 GMT Thursday).
SpaceX and NASA engineers reviewed data from the Axiom mission and cleared the Crew-4 mission for liftoff during a launch readiness review early Tuesday.
“It was a very clean flight overall, really no major issues,” said Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager. “The team went through all of the data, and they had a chance to review everything. They looked at the thermal protection system.”
Stich said the parachutes on the Dragon Endeavour spacecraft performed well Monday, with no sign of any lagging inflation of any of the four main chutes, a phenomenon observed on several previous Dragon flights.
The Crew-4 mission will be SpaceX’s seventh launch of astronauts, and the company’s fourth operational crew rotation flight to the space staton under a multibillion contract with NASA. The space agency announced in February it awarded three additional crew flights to SpaceX on Dragon spacecraft, a contract extension valued at nearly $900 million covering the Crew-7, Crew-8, and Crew-9 missions.
NASA has a similar contract with Boeing for six operational crew missions on the Starliner spacecraft, which is still in its test phase and has not yet flown astronauts.
Stich said the final loading of cargo into the Dragon Freedom spacecraft has been completed in preparation for launch Wednesday. SpaceX’s recovery teams, U.S. military rescue forces, and the Coast Guard are ready to support the mission, he said.
There’s a 90% chance of acceptable weather at the Kennedy Space Center for liftoff Wednesday morning, and a low-to-moderate risk of bad conditions along the Falcon 9’s ascent corridor heading northeast over the Atlantic Ocean. SpaceX monitors conditions downrange to ensure weather and sea states would be safe for a splashdown of the Dragon spacecraft in the event of an in-flight abort caused by a rocket failure.
Once the Dragon spacecraft delivers its crew to the space station, Lindgren, Hines, Cristoforetti and Watkins will receive briefings from the four astronauts they are replacing on the station.
The flight plan calls for handover of at least five days between the new Crew-4 astronauts and the outgoing Crew-3 astronauts, who are tentatively scheduled to depart the station around May 4, targeting a splashdown off the coast of Florida around May 5, wrapping up their nearly six-month mission.
Commander Raja Chari, pilot Tom Marshburn, and mission specialists Matthias Maurer and Kayla Barron launched on the Crew-3 mission last November. They will ride SpaceX’s Dragon Endurance spacecraft back to Earth, leaving the Crew-4 astronauts at the station with three Russian cosmonaut crewmates.
Lindgren and his crew will fly on the first mission of SpaceX’s fourth — and likely final — human-rated Dragon spacecraft. The crew announced last month the new capsule will be named “Freedom.”
“We want to celebrate what we see as fundamental human right, and also to celebrate what the unfettered human spirit is capable of,” Lindgren said in a pre-flight press conference. “And it’s also just kind of a reflection of how we’ve come.”
The name also honors Freedom 7, the capsule that carried astronaut Alan Shepard to suborbital space on the first U.S. human spaceflight mission in May 1961.
“To see that first launch of Freedom 7, and to see where we are today is really a remarkable thing,” Lindgren said. “So we wanted to celebrate freedom for a new generation of space fliers.”
The new Dragon Freedom spacecraft looks like the other three capsules in SpaceX’s fleet of reusable vehicles. But it comes with some upgrades, including an improvement in the voice communications system.
The astronauts also heralded an addition that would be appreciated by anyone on a long road trip.
“We now have USB charging ports in this spacecraft,” Lindgren said. “This is something that goes to low Earth orbit and is going to get us to the space station, and I’m talking about USB ports.”
The charging ports will allow the astronauts to top up power on their tablets, which contain reference materials for the flight up to the space station.
“It’s the little things. Next, the coffeemaker,” Lindgren joked.
“No wifi though!” Hines retorted.
The crew will get internet access after arriving at the space station. Communications on-board the Dragon spacecraft goes through SpaceX’s mission control in Hawthorne, California.
Lindgren, 49 and a father of three, was born in Taiwan and grew up in England and in the United States, then attended the U.S. Air Force Academy, where was a member of the school’s parachute team. He later earned a medical degree and became a NASA flight surgeon before his selection to join the NASA astronaut corps in 2009.
After completing his first space mission, a long-duration expedition that lasted 141 days, Lindgren was assigned as the backup to NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken on SpaceX’s first Dragon test flight to carry people into orbit.
Hines is a 47-year-old lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force gearing up for his first launch into space. He was born in North Carolina and grew up in Pennsylvania, then served as an F-15E fighter pilot and graduated from Air Force Test Pilot School. Hines continued to fly F-15s as a test pilot and deployed overseas in support of special forces operations, while also working as a test pilot for the Federal Aviation Administration.
NASA hired Hines as a research pilot based in Houston in 2012, and the agency selected him to become an astronaut in 2017.
Watkins also joined NASA’s astronaut corps in 2017. The 33-year-old scientist will become the first Black woman to live and work on the space station for a long-duration mission.
“This is certainly an important milestone, I think, both for our agency and for the country,” Watkins said. “I think it’s really just a tribute to the legacy of the Black women astronauts that have come before, as well as to the exciting future ahead.”
She was born in Maryland and considers Lafayette, Colorado, as her hometown. She earned a doctorate in geology from UCLA, then joined the science team working on NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover mission, participated in system design for the Perseverance rover and the Mars Sample Return mission.
Watkins was one of 18 astronauts NASA named in 2020 for potential future assignments to moon missions under the agency’s Artemis lunar program. She said her work at the station, among other tasks, will help develop technology and robotics for the Artemis program, along with experiments in radiation protection and human health and biological research, all areas geared toward enabling longer and farther missions into space.
“As NASA pivots to the moon and Mars, that pivot point is the space station,” Hines said. “So all that technology is going to the space station, where we develop it and refine it before we pivot and send it off to the moon and eventually on to Mars.”
Cristoforetti, 44, has logged more time in space — nearly 200 days — than any of her crewmates. Like Lindgren, she launched on first space mission aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket and spacecraft.
Born in Milan, Italy, Cristoforetti holds a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Technical University of Munich. She was a fighter pilot in the Italian Air Force before ESA selected her as part of its 2009 astronaut class.
The astronauts will perform spacewalks and conduct experiments during their time on the space station. Cristoforetti may have a chance to head outside the station in a Russian spacesuit to help activate the European Robotic Arm.
The Crew-4 mission is scheduled to end in mid-September with a re-entry and splashdown off the coast of Florida. NASA’s Crew-5 mission is set for launch to the space station in early September.
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NASA has moved their new SLS moon rocket back into its Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, after a series of issues prevented completion of a wet dress rehearsal (WDR) on launch pad 39B. The two-day WDR test is intended to demonstrate the vehicle and launch team’s ability to load propellants […]
The post SLS Rolls Back to VAB for Repairs first appeared on AmericaSpace.
NASA rolled the giant new rocket for the Artemis 1 moon mission off the launch pad back inside the Vehicle Assembly Building before dawn Tuesday at the Kennedy Space Center, moving into the hangar for repairs after technical problems prevented teams from completing a countdown dress rehearsal earlier this month.
Agency officials hope to complete the repairs and finish testing on the Space Launch System moon rocket in time for liftoff of the Artemis 1 mission no earlier than August, about two months later than previously scheduled. Artemis 1, an unpiloted mission, is the first test flight of the Space Launch System, the rocket NASA designed to send astronauts back to the moon.
“We’ve got the vehicle back in the Vehicle Assembly Building,” said Bob Cabana, NASA’s associate administrator, the third-most senior position at the space agency. “Obviously, we’re going solve that hydrogen leak issue in the tail service mast umbilical. We have a valve on the interim cryo propulsion upper stage that needs to be changed out. There’s some other work that needs to get done.”
The faulty helium check valve in the upper stage and the hydrogen leak, discovered in the interface between the core stage and the mobile launch platform, prevented NASA from fully loading the SLS moon rocket with more than 750,000 gallons of super-cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants during a series of countdown tests, or “wet dress rehearsals,” earlier this month.
“We will complete that work, and we still have a lot to do with wet dress rehearsal, so the team is evaluating options,” Cabana said. “We’ll make a decision here in the not too distant future of what the best path forward is.”
As for the soonest schedule when the SLS moon rocket might be ready for its first test flight, Cabana said: “August — there are options that still get us there.”
“The important thing now is we’ve got to do this right,” Cabana said. “It’s a big rocket, a lot of new equipment, new systems on the ground side and on the flight side.”
The 4.2-mile (6.8-kilometer) journey from pad 39B began at 7:54 p.m. EDT (2354 GMT) Monday, when NASA’s diesel-powered crawler-transporter rolled the SLS moon rocket and its mobile launch platform off the launch pad pedestals.
Reaching a top speed just shy of 1 mph, the crawler moved the rocket down the ramp at pad 39B, then along the rock-covered crawlerway leading to the Vehicle Assembly Building. The entire stack weighs about 21.4 million pounds.
After working through the night, NASA’s ground team parked the SLS moon rocket outside the VAB for about an hour, allowing time for the crew access arm near the top of the rocket’s mobile launcher tower to move into position next to the Orion crew capsule on top of the vehicle.
Then the 322-foot-tall (98-meter) rocket rolled through the vertical door and into High Bay 3 inside the Vehicle Assembly Building. The crawler’s jacking and leveling system lowered the mobile launch platform onto pedestals inside the hangar shortly after 6 a.m. EDT (1000 GMT), completing the 10-hour journey from pad 39B.
While repairs and troubleshooting begin inside the VAB, teams from Air Liquide, which runs a plant just outside the gates of the Kennedy Space Center, will upgrade the gaseous nitrogen supply that leads into the spaceport through a pipeline. NASA found that the nitrogen gas supply was not sufficient for the high demands of the Space Launch System, a rocket larger than any other currently flying from the Florida spaceport.
NASA’s crawler-transporter is in the home stretch of its 21.4 million-pound haul back to the Vehicle Assembly Building with with the Artemis 1 moon rocket. https://t.co/bWe7HJqPxY pic.twitter.com/RLrzaLdrLF
— Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) April 26, 2022
The large size of the SLS moon rocket means it needs more propellants and other fluids, including nitrogen gas, than other rockets.
“We are upgrading the vaporization system to optimally manage the increased nitrogen requirements during launches,” said Alyson Bartol, a spokesperson for Air Liquide, which also supplies nitrogen gas for commercial launch operations in Florida, including SpaceX missions. “The nitrogen supplied to Kennedy Space Center is not restricted for use by NASA only, therefore other parties utilizing the supply will also benefit from the upgrades to Air Liquide’s system.”
NASA rolled the SLS moon rocket out to pad 39B on March 17 to prepare for the rocket’s first full-up countdown rehearsal and fueling test, culminating in a cutoff of the countdown clock at T-minus 9 seconds, just before main engine ignition.
NASA’s launch team attempted to pump propellants into the rocket April 3, April 4, and April 14. The final wet dress rehearsal test ended with the discovery of the hydrogen leak in the tail service mast umbilical, where propellants flow from the mobile launch platform into the SLS core stage.
The furthest the launch team got in the dress rehearsal was filling about 5% of the core stage’s liquid hydrogen tank and loading about half of its liquid oxygen.
Initial inspections at the launch pad revealed no sign of the hydrogen leak.
Exposure to super-cold propellants contracts components in the mobile launch platform and the rocket itself, manifesting leaks not apparent at ambient temperatures. Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, NASA’s Artemis 1 launch director, said last week engineers and technicians in the VAB will use probes and instrumentation to scan for a leak. They will also inspect seals, and re-torque flange connections in the umbilical, she said.
NASA officials originally planned to roll the SLS moon rocket back to the hangar after completing the wet dress rehearsal, allowing ground crews to complete closeouts on the rocket, test the vehicle’s flight termination system, and install final equipment into the Orion crew capsule.
Then the rocket would roll out again to pad 39B for launch preparations and the real countdown for the Artemis 1 mission, perhaps as soon as early June.
Blackwell-Thompson said NASA managers are evaluating three options for how to complete the work required before clearing the Artemis 1 mission for liftoff.
One is a “VAB quick turn” option that would focus engineers on completing the minimum work to ready the rocket for another wet dress rehearsal run. That work would include replacing the upper stage helium valve and fixing the hydrogen leak, but the rocket would still need to come back to the VAB for final pre-flight preps.
“There’s a second option that looks at doing a great amount of work in the VAB, maybe getting closer to your rollout for flight configuration,” Blackwell-Thompson said. This option would also require another rollback to the hangar, but would involve a relatively shorter stay in the VAB focused on flight termination system testing.
The third option under consideration would keep the SLS moon rocket in the VAB for a longer period of time after rolling back from the pad next week, allowing teams to complete all the work needed to outfit the launcher for flight. Then the rocket would roll out again to pad 39B, allowing NASA to run through a wet dress rehearsal and then the real launch attempt during one campaign.
The third option would include a 20-day limit from the time the rocket rolls out of the VAB until the mission must launch. The restriction is associated with the flight termination system, which would be activated to destroy the rocket if it flew off course.
The U.S. Space Force’s Eastern Range, responsible for public safety, only certifies the SLS flight termination system for 20 days after it completes an end-to-end test inside the Vehicle Assembly Building.
The comprehensive flight termination system check can only be run inside the VAB, so the rocket would have to return to the hangar for another end-to-end test after 20 days, potentially leaving little margin for error to resolve problems during a wet dress rehearsal, and still proceed with the Artemis 1 launch.
Tom Whitmeyer, NASA’s exploration systems manager, said last week the agency is committed to completing the wet dress rehearsal before launching the SLS moon rocket.
“We will absolutely go back out,” he said. “We are absolutely going to do a dress rehearsal. We’ll demonstrate cryo loading, and we will also demonstrate terminal countdown.
“It’s just a matter of what’s the right time and what’s the right way to do that, and how that might fit in our forward scheduling.”
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