NASA and SpaceX are making ultimate preparations for the Crew-9 astronaut flight to the Worldwide Area Station (ISS), which is about to launch from the Kennedy Area Heart in Florida on Wednesday, September 25.
However for the primary time in SpaceX’s 13 crewed flights to the ISS since the first one in 2020, there might be two empty seats on the Crew Dragon spacecraft. And there’s an excellent motive for that. Allow us to clarify.
In current weeks, there’s been loads of information protection about a few NASA astronauts — Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore — being “stranded” on the space station after their Boeing-made Starliner spacecraft suffered points on its first crewed flight to orbit in June. Regardless of the difficulties, the capsule docked with the ISS and delivered the 2 astronauts to the house station.
After a lot effort attempting to resolve the Starliner points, NASA determined to err on the aspect of warning by bringing the troubled spacecraft residence empty in a profitable mission that took place last weekend.
The choice to convey the Starliner residence with out Williams and Wilmore meant that their temporary 10-day mission abruptly turned a prolonged eight-month keep aboard the orbital outpost, as a result of their experience residence will now be 0n the Crew Dragon that’s arriving subsequent week.
Crew-9 initially had 4 astronauts assigned to it, however two of them — Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson — have been instructed they’ll have to sit down out the flight, with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos astronaut Aleksandr Gorbunov taking two of the 4 seats contained in the capsule.
On the finish of their six-month mission, Hague and Gorbunov will fly home alongside Williams and Wilmore aboard the Crew Dragon, bringing to an finish one of the extraordinary and sudden missions ever to have taken place on the ISS.
