{"id":10852,"date":"2021-11-05T01:33:49","date_gmt":"2021-11-04T17:33:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/nasa-rules-out-weekend-crew-dragon-launch-may-bring-station-crew-home-first\/"},"modified":"2021-11-05T01:33:49","modified_gmt":"2021-11-04T17:33:49","slug":"nasa-rules-out-weekend-crew-dragon-launch-may-bring-station-crew-home-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/nasa-rules-out-weekend-crew-dragon-launch-may-bring-station-crew-home-first\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA rules out weekend Crew Dragon launch, may bring station crew home first"},"content":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION<\/p>\n

\"\"
SpaceX\u2019s Crew Dragon Endurance spacecraft sits atop its Falcon 8 launcher at Kennedy Space Center on Oct. 31. Credit: NASA\/Joel Kowsky<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NASA has ruled out a weekend launch for a SpaceX Crew Dragon carrying four astronauts to the International Space Station, delaying the Crew-3 flight to Monday at the earliest due to expected bad weather, agency officials said Thursday.<\/p>\n

Given an uncertain forecast, the mission managers may opt instead to bring four station astronauts \u2014 Crew-2 \u2014 back to Earth first, delaying the Crew-3 launch to later next week.<\/p>\n

\u201cMission teams will make a final decision on whether to prioritize Crew-3\u2019s launch or Crew-2\u2019s return in the coming days based on the likelihood of favorable conditions for a Crew Dragon splashdown or Crew Dragon launch,\u201d NASA said in an afternoon blog post. \u201cNASA and SpaceX also are reviewing the time needed between launch or return operations.\u201d<\/p>\n

If NASA presses ahead with the Crew-3 launch Monday, liftoff from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center would be targeted for 9:51 p.m. EST. If Crew-2 is ordered home first, undocking could come as early as 1:05 p.m. Sunday for a splashdown off the coast of Florida on Monday.<\/p>\n

SpaceX requires several days to transition from Crew Dragon recovery operations to a launch campaign and a Monday landing by the Crew-2 astronauts would further delay the launch of their replacements.<\/p>\n

It also would prevent a \u201cdirect handover\u201d in which an outgoing station crew spends several days with their replacements, familiarizing them with lab operations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are dynamic and complex decisions that change day by day,\u201d Steve Stich, NASA\u2019s Commercial Crew Program manager, said in the blog post. \u201cThe weather in November can be especially challenging, so our goal is to move forward on the plan with the highest probability of mission assurance and crew safety.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crew-3 astronauts Raja Chari, Thomas Marshburn, Kayla Barron and European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer originally planned to take off Oct. 31. But the flight was delayed to Wednesday because of high waves in the Atlantic Ocean along the Crew Dragon\u2019s trajectory to orbit where the crew might have to attempt an emergency landing in an abort.<\/p>\n

The flight then was delayed to at least Saturday because of an unspecified medical issue with one of the crew members. In Thursday\u2019s blog post, NASA said the medical issue is still being monitored, but it\u2019s expected to be cleared by the time Crew-3 launches, whenever that might be.<\/p>\n

The launch delay to Monday at the earliest was due to predicted high \u201cliftoff winds, cumulus clouds, and surface electric field constraints\u201d Saturday, NASA said, and unacceptable downrange weather Sunday along the ascent trajectory.<\/p>\n

\u201cMission teams are still monitoring weather conditions for a launch attempt on Monday, Nov. 8,\u201d NASA said. \u201cThe primary operational concern is strong winds at the pad and unfavorable conditions down range.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the meantime, the clock is ticking on the Crew-2 Dragon.<\/p>\n

The Crew-2 astronauts \u2014 commander Shane Kimbrough, Megan McArthur, European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet and Japanese flier Akihiko Hoshide \u2014 were launched to the station on April 23. A Monday splashdown would close out a mission spanning 199 days, just 11 days shy of the spacecraft\u2019s 210-day certification.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION SpaceX\u2019s Crew Dragon Endurance spacecraft sits atop its Falcon 8 launcher at Kennedy Space Center on Oct. 31. Credit: NASA\/Joel Kowsky NASA has ruled out a weekend launch for a SpaceX Crew Dragon carrying four astronauts to the International Space Station, delaying the Crew-3 flight to Monday at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10852"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10852\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}