SpaceX launches another crew to space station for NASA

The mission is SpaceX’s sixth operational human spaceflight mission for NASA because it was awarded a $2.6 billion contract as a part of the company’s Business Crew program. It additionally flew a check flight of a pair of NASA astronauts in 2020 and has flown two crews of personal residents as nicely.

Boeing can also be beneath contract from NASA to move astronauts to and from the station, and its contract was for a considerably increased quantity, $4.2 billion. However Boeing, confronted with a sequence of technical issues, has but to fly a single crew. The corporate is hoping its first check flight with a pair of astronauts will are available April.

SpaceX scrubbed an earlier Crew-6 launch try Monday after an issue with a floor system that provides a liquid that mixes with liquid oxygen to ignite the rocket booster’s 9 engines.

In a weblog put up Wednesday, NASA stated the issue was because of “a clogged floor filter.” SpaceX crews changed the filter, purged the provision strains “and verified the strains are clear and prepared for launch,” NASA stated.

The Dragon spacecraft transporting the Crew-6 astronauts to the station known as “Endeavour.” It has transported three different crews to the area station, together with that of Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, the astronauts whose check flight in 2020 was the primary human spaceflight mission launched from the US because the area shuttle was retired in 2011. They named the spacecraft Endeavour after the Area Shuttle Endeavour, which transported each of them on their first journeys to area.

The flight comes days after a Russian rescue spacecraft arrived on the area station to switch one other that had sprung a leak. Roscosmos, the Russian area company, decided it was not protected to fly the crew — NASA astronaut Frank Rubio in addition to Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin — house on the leaking craft. After a second capsule, this one designed to fly cargo solely, sprang an analogous leak whereas docked on the station, NASA officers sought assurances that the substitute craft could be in good working order.

The back-to-back leaks created a little bit of drama on the station as nicely. However Nicole Mann, a NASA astronaut aboard the orbiting laboratory, stated the worldwide crews have been capable of work collectively to beat the issues.

“It’s very spectacular to me to see how everyone comes collectively to work with these off-nominal conditions,” she stated throughout a information briefing with reporters Wednesday from the station. “For me, this actually optimizes what we’re doing as human beings to discover in area. We’re uniting the world as a species, and collectively, once we mix our efforts, it’s exceptional what we will obtain.”