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Individuals of SpaceX Crew-11 sit down aboard a Dragon spacecraft. From left: Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, NASA astronaut Mike Fincke and Zena Cardman, and JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui.
(Portray credit ranking: NASA)
The subsequent astronaut launch to the Global Region Region (ISS) is fine all over the corner.
NASA is targeting July 31 for the launch of its next astronaut mission with SpaceX. The flight, referred to as Crew-11, will lift off atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex-39A (LC-39A), at NASA’s Kennedy Region Middle in Florida, sending the Crew Dragon Endeavour to low Earth orbit (LEO). The flight will designate the sixth mission for Endeavour, making it SpaceX’s most-flown Crew Dragon spacecraft.
Aboard, NASA astronauts Zena Cardman (Crew-11 commander) and Mike Fincke (pilot) will likely be joined by mission experts Kimiya Yui from the Eastern Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and Oleg Platonov, of the Russian enviornment company Roscosmos. This may maybe occasionally be the main spaceflight for Cardman and Platonov, the 2nd for Yui and the fourth for Fincke.
The Falcon 9 first stage supporting Crew-11, designated B1094, has launched two previous missions: Starlink 12-10 and, most recently, the inner most Ax-4 astronaut mission on June 25. B1094 is for the time being undergoing the final stages of refurbishment main up to the July 31 launch. This may maybe occasionally be transported to SpaceX’s Horizontal Integration Facility next to LC-39A to be mated to the rocket’s 2nd stage forward of a static-fire test at the pad in every week or two, in accordance to NASA’s Commercial Crew Program Manager Steve Stich all the plot in which by means of a mission briefing on Thursday (July 10).
Crew Dragon Endeavour has also passed by means of refurbishment since its last launch — Crew-8, in March 2024 — and has got some upgrades forward of the Crew-11 mission. Endeavour may maybe be the main Crew Dragon to drift with the updated drogue 3.1 parachutes, first flown on SpaceX’s CRS-32 Cargo Dragon mission. The upgrades encompass stronger crowns within the parachutes’ supplies and a brand fresh packaging system designed for “more orderly inflation,” Stich acknowledged all the plot in which by means of Thursday’s briefing.
“This Dragon spacecraft has efficiently flown 18 crew members representing eight countries to enviornment already, starting up with [NASA astronauts] Bob [Behnken] and Doug [Hurley] in 2020, when it returned human spaceflight capabilities to the United States for the first time since the shuttle retired in July of 2011,” explained Sarah Walker, SpaceX’s director of Dragon mission management.
Crew-11 had been slated for launch in “late July/early August” but changed into once accelerated by about 2 weeks to accommodate a basic ISS reboost maneuver to be performed by a SpaceX Cargo Dragon as a piece of the upcoming CRS-33 place of abode resupply mission. CRS-33 may maybe be the main Cargo Dragon with altitude-correction hardware designed to defend the realm place of abode’s orbit, and may maybe simply nonetheless designate a step furthering NASA and SpaceX’s efforts to create a U.S. automotive that will deorbit the ISS at the discontinue of its life at the discontinue of 2030 or thereabouts.
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The Crew-11 launch date is section of a lawful choreography of enviornment place of abode traffic over the subsequent a number of months, which accommodates the fresh arrivals of the Ax-4 inner most astronaut mission, as successfully as Russia’s Growth 92 cargo flight. Axiom’s astronauts must always go the ISS before Crew-11’s launch, that will likely be followed in a subject of days by the departure of Crew-10. That may maybe sure a port for the arrival of SpaceX’s CRS-33 Cargo Dragon and originate plot for the upcoming enhance maneuver.
“Providing multiple methods for us to maintain the station altitude is critically important as we continue to operate and get the most use out of our limited launch resources that we do have,” Invoice Spetch, ISS operations integration supervisor at NASA’s Johnson Region Middle in Houston, acknowledged all the plot in which by means of Thursday’s briefing. “We’re really looking forward to demonstrating that capability with [CRS-33] showing up after we get through the Crew-11 and Crew-10 handover.”
Between now and the discontinue of the three hundred and sixty five days, the ISS may be looking at for the arrival of Northrop Grumman’s NG-23 Cygnus cargo mission, JAXA’s HTV-X cargo automotive, and the Soyuz MS-28 mission carrying NASA astronaut Christopher Williams and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Mikayev in November.
The members of Crew-11 will likely be section of ISS Expedition 73/74 and may maybe simply nonetheless ride a basic milestone all the plot in which by means of their mission. Nov. 2 will designate 25 consecutive years that the ISS has sustained a power human presence. “That’s going to be a huge milestone,” acknowledged Ken Bowersox, partner administrator of NASA’s Region Operations Mission Directorate. The occasion, he added, is “a great testament to the work of our commercial partners, our international partners and the whole NASA team.”
Crew-11’s launch window opens at 12:09 p.m. EDT (1609 GMT) on July 31. If that launch agenda holds, the crew can enjoy a 39-hour transit to meet up with the realm place of abode — the longest time between launch and rendezvous for a Crew Dragon ISS mission to date. Mission constraints enjoy onboard consumables dictate that the spacecraft dock with the ISS within a 40-hour window following launch, but Cardman says that includes some wiggle room.
“That 40-hour limit is in place so that we can preserve margin for the downhill as well,” Cardman explained to Region.com, “so nothing magically happens at 40 hours and one second.”
An on-time departure would put Crew-11 on the correct monitor to dock with the ISS spherical 3:00 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT) on Aug. 3, after which the four astronauts will settle into their fresh orbital dwelling for a protracted-length stint aboard the realm place of abode that will likely be full of a complex agenda of science, maintenance and staring for ever and ever at the wonders of Earth below.
“We will have a world-class physics experiment one hour and then fixing the toilet the next hour and then doing some biological science data collection on myself the next,” Cardman explained.
