Hurricane Ian has pushed the launch of SpaceX’s subsequent astronaut mission for NASA again by no less than a day.
SpaceX and NASA had been planning to launch the Crew-5 flight to the Worldwide Area Station on Oct. 3 from Pad 39A at Kennedy Area Heart (KSC) in Florida. However the specter of Ian, which is at the moment churning north towards Florida as a robust Class 3 hurricane, has delayed the deliberate liftoff by no less than 24 hours, to Oct. 4. And that schedule is much from set in stone.
“Mission groups will proceed to observe the impacts of Ian on the Area Coast and NASA’s Kennedy Area Heart in Florida and will modify the launch date once more, as mandatory,” NASA officers wrote in an replace in the present day (opens in new tab) (Sept. 27).
In footage: Superb launch photographs of SpaceX’s Crew-4 mission
The Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule that may fly on Crew-5 are secure inside SpaceX’s hangar at Pad 39A, NASA officers added in in the present day’s replace.
If present plans maintain, the Crew-5 astronauts will arrive at KSC from NASA’s Johnson Area Heart in Houston on Friday (Sept. 30). Rollout of the Falcon 9 and Dragon to the launch pad will happen round that very same time, supplied the climate is nice sufficient for a possible Oct. 4 liftoff. A backup date is obtainable on Oct. 5.
Crew-5 will ship NASA astronauts Nicole Aunapu Mann and Josh Cassada, Japan’s Koichi Wakata and Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina to the Worldwide Area Station (ISS) for a five-month keep. It’ll mark the primary time a cosmonaut has ever ridden a non-public American spacecraft to the orbiting lab.
SpaceX’s most up-to-date mission, Crew-4, stays aboard the ISS however is scheduled to come back house quickly. Crew-4’s departure date will depend on Crew-5’s launch date; NASA and SpaceX need the 2 missions to overlap for 5 days on the station.
Crew-5 is not the one mission affected by Hurricane Ian. The storm pressured NASA to roll its large Artemis 1 moon rocket off KSC’s Pad 39B and again to the protection of the middle’s large Automobile Meeting Constructing late final evening (Sept. 26).
The Artemis 1 group had been hoping to launch the uncrewed moon mission in the present day. Now, a launch sooner than November appears unlikely.
Mike Wall is the creator of “Out There (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a e book concerning the seek for alien life. Comply with him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in new tab). Comply with us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or on Fb (opens in new tab).