The items are in position for SpaceX’s Group-9 astronaut challenge, which is about to release this week.NASA’s Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov arrived at Kennedy Area Heart (KSC) in Florida on Saturday (Sept. 21). The duo will fly to the World area Station (ISS) aboard a SpaceX Group Dragon tablet, which is about to release atop a Falcon 9 rocket on Thursday (Sept. 26) from Pad 40 at close by Cape Canaveral Area Power Station.”Hague and Gorbunov will quarantine on the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Development at Kennedy,” NASA officers wrote in an replace on Saturday. “Whilst there, they will behavior a dry get dressed practice session of the challenge, sleep shift to align their resting and waking sessions with challenge necessities, rehearse flight procedures, in addition to make calls to friends and family.”
The SpaceX Group Dragon tablet Freedom is transported to Pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Area Power Station in Florida forward of the challenge’s deliberate Sept. 26, 2024 liftoff. SpaceX launched this picture by way of X on Sept. 20. (Symbol credit score: SpaceX)Group-9’s Dragon, named Freedom, could also be on website, SpaceX introduced by way of X on Friday (Sept. 20), in a submit that shared two pictures of the tablet.Similar: Meet the SpaceX Group-9 astronauts launching to the World Area Station Sept. 26As its identify suggests, Group-9 would be the 9th long-duration astronaut challenge that SpaceX flies to the ISS for NASA. Those flights in most cases elevate 4 other people; two crewmembers have been taken off Group-9 so Freedom may haul NASA’s Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams backpedal to Earth in February on the challenge’s finish.Wilmore and Williams arrived on the ISS in early June at the first-ever crewed challenge of Boeing’s Starliner tablet. They have been intended to come back house on Starliner per week or so later, however NASA prolonged the challenge time and again to review and troubleshoot thruster problems that the tablet skilled on its solution to the orbiting lab.Signal as much as the e-newsletter for the newest updates on rocket launches, skywatching occasions and extra!The company in the end determined to carry Starliner again to Earth uncrewed, which took place on Sept. 7, and depart Wilmore and Williams at the ISS till Group-9 wraps up. As a part of that call, Williams was once named commander of the station’s present Expedition 72.
The SpaceX Group Dragon tablet Freedom at Pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Area Power Station in Florida. (Symbol credit score: SpaceX)Group-9 would be the first astronaut challenge ever to release from Pad 40 at Cape Canaveral and simply the second one crewed effort to fly from the Area Power station total, after Starliner’s June 5 liftoff. (KSC, which is true subsequent door, has hosted many crewed launches over the many years.)Hague, Group-9’s commander, will turn into the primary lively U.S. Area Power Mum or dad to release to area within the historical past of the army department. He lived aboard the ISS from March 2019 to October 2019, however the Area Power wasn’t established till December of that yr.Group-9 would be the first spaceflight for Gorbunov, a challenge specialist who was once decided on via Roscosmos, Russia’s area company, in 2018.
