NASA, SpaceX launch international Crew-6 mission from Florida to ISS
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An international crew of three astronauts and a cosmonaut launched from Kennedy Space Center early Thursday, kicking off a roughly six-month science mission to the International Space Station.
At 12:34 a.m. EST, a Falcon 9 rocket vaulted off pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center with NASA's SpaceX Crew-6 mission, the seventh flight under contract between the agency and California-based company. Onboard were NASA's Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, the United Arab Emirates' Sultan Alneyadi, and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.
"Once more unto the breach, dear friends," mission commander Bowen, quoting Shakespeare's "Henry V," said just before liftoff. "Crew-6 is ready to launch."
The Falcon 9 rocket's first stage was brand new and successfully landed on the Just Read the Instructions drone ship stationed several hundred miles downrange in the Atlantic Ocean. The Dragon capsule, meanwhile, previously flew three missions: Demo-2 in 2020, Crew-2 in 2021, and Axiom's private Ax-1 mission last year. Dragon is slated to dock with the ISS at 1:17 a.m. EST Friday.
After reaching orbit, Hoburg had plenty of praise for the hardware: "As a rookie flyer, that was one heck of a ride. It's an absolutely miracle of engineering and I just feel so lucky that I get to fly on this amazing machine," he said.
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Crew-6's four astronauts are a truly international team:
NASA's Stephen Bowen (commander): From Cohasset, Massachusetts, Bowen is a veteran of three space shuttle flights and helped construct the ISS more than two decades ago. He is a retired Navy captain and became the first submarine officer selected for astronaut duty in 2020. He has three children with his wife, Deborah.
NASA's Warren "Woody" Hoburg (pilot): From Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Hoburg is a commercial pilot and was an aeronautics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when he was selected for NASA's astronaut class in 2017. Crew-6 marks his first spaceflight.
Sultan Alneyadi, a mission specialist, is the first astronaut from the United Arab Emirates to fly on Dragon. His flight was organized Axiom Space, a private company that partners with NASA to offer trips to the ISS to non-NASA organizations. He's flying the first long-duration ISS mission for any astronaut from an Arab nation. Before becoming an astronaut, he was a communications engineer in the UAE armed forces.
Andrey Fedyaev (mission specialist): Fedyaev, formerly a major in the Russian air force, was selected as a cosmonaut in 2012. Crew-6 is his first mission. He's the second cosmonaut to fly on SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule as a swap partnership between NASA and Roscosmos, the country's space agency.
NASA and SpaceX previously tried to launch Crew-6 on Monday, Feb. 27, but an issue with the system that ignites the Falcon 9 rocket's Merlin main engines forced teams to stand down and troubleshoot. NASA astronaut Raja Chari, who flew the Crew-3 mission in November 2021, said during the agency's broadcast the issue was narrowed down to oxidation of lines that carry TEA-TEB, or triethylaluminium and triethylborane, to the pad. TEA-TEB ignites on contact with air, allowing the Merlin engines to fire and produce up to 1.7 million pounds of thrust.
"Much appreciated call for the scrub the other night," Bowen, previously a space shuttle astronaut, said just before Thursday's liftoff. "It was a great call and a good learning opportunity for the crew and I think for the teams."
The Space Coast's next high-profile mission, meanwhile, will be launched by a newcomer: Relativity Space is targeting no earlier than 1 p.m. Wednesday, March 8, for the first launch of its Terran rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's Launch Complex 16.
At 110 feet in height, Terran 1 is about half the height of SpaceX's Falcon 9 and United Launch Alliance's Atlas V. But Relativity says the rocket is mostly 3D printed – 85% by mass. The cutting-edge process means rockets can be built in weeks instead of months or years and uses fewer parts.
Relativity prints its rockets and engines in California before shipping them via truck to the Cape.
For the latest, visit floridatoday.com/launchschedule.
Contact Emre Kelly at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @EmreKelly.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: NASA, SpaceX launch international Crew-6 mission from Florida to ISS
