NASA's SpaceX Crew 11 Launches to International Space Station
Four astronauts launched to the International Space Station on Friday, after a canceled launch attempt on Thursday in Florida.
The first launch attempt was cancelled during the last minute of the countdown due to threatening clouds hovering above the launch site at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. According to the ABC 7 News website, officials decided the cumulus cloud rule was the main reason the launch was cancelled.
On Friday, U-shaped clouds appeared, but fortunately stayed far enough away from the launch.
Although they left Earth nearly 24 hours later, the docking time stayed the same—Saturday at 3 a.m. ET because of how the orbital trajectories were arranged.
Steve Stich, the manager of NASA’s commercial crew program, said during a post-launch news conference, “We got very lucky today, I would say.”
This is the 11th time SpaceX has brought astronauts to the International Space Station, which is why this mission is called Crew-11. This is part of the regular rotation of crew members living and working in orbit.
Once Crew-11 arrives, Crew 10—who have been at the space station since March—will begin to prepare to return to Earth. They are expected to return in the next week.
According to the NASA website, part of the four crew members’ mission is “to perform research, technology demonstrations, and maintenance activities aboard the orbiting laboratory.”
The article also added, “During the mission, Crew-11 also will contribute to NASA’s Artemis campaign by simulating Moon landing scenarios that astronauts may encounter near the lunar South Pole, showing how the space station helps prepare crews for deep space human exploration. The simulations will be performed before, during, and after their mission using handheld controllers and multiple screens to identify how changes in gravity affect spatial awareness and astronauts’ ability to pilot spacecraft, like a lunar lander.”
The Crew Dragon Spacecraft held Zena Cardman and Michael Fincke, both from NASA, Kimiya Yui from Japan, and Oleg Platonov from Russia.
Coincidentally, the day of docking also happened to be on the fifth anniversary of the splashdown of the first Crew Dragon mission with astronauts. A splashdown is the procedure of landing a spacecraft in a body of water, usually using a parachute.
On August 2, 2020, Robert L. Behnken and Douglas G. Hurley returned to Earth after 2 months at the space station.
Even more coincidentally, the Crew Dragon spacecraft that launched on Friday was the same one used for that first mission!
Mr. Behnken and Mr. Hurley named this specific spacecraft Endeavour. Since then, Endeavour has made four more round trips to the space station for NASA. The Crew-11 mission is the 6th mission to space for Endeavour.
Sarah Walker, director of Dragon mission management at SpaceX, said, “While we’re on fun facts about this Dragon spacecraft that holds the record for the most time in orbit by any American spacecraft.”
Ms. Walker also shared that Endeavour holds a record for the longest single mission—235 days in orbit during Crew-8 and the increasing record of 700 days and more.
Fun fact: Endeavour will be approaching a total of 1,000 days in space due to the Crew-11 astronauts scheduled to stay at the space station for six months.
Sean Duffy, acting NASA administrator, met with Dmitry Bakanov, director general of Roscosmos—the state corporation that supervises Russia’s space program.
TASS, the Russian news agency, was the first to report on the meeting, and then NASA later confirmed.
Kenneth Bowersox, associate administrator of NASA‘s space operations mission directorate, stated in the Friday news conference that he would not provide any details about their conversation but said it went very well.
Mr. Bowersox said he thought the two of them had a great connection and started what could be the beginning of what could be a good relationship.
This was the first time since 2018 that a NASA administrator and the head of Roscosmos had met in person.
