The eighth manned commercial mission from NASA and SpaceX to the International Space Station (ISS) took off on Sunday from Florida, made up of three Americans and one Russian, after the launch was postponed twice due to strong winds at the takeoff center.
Today the launch occurred as planned, at 10:53 p.m. local time on the east coast of the United States (3:53 GMT) from the Kennedy Space Center, in central Florida, aboard a Dragon spacecraft, Endeavour, from platform 39A powered by a Falcon 9 rocket.
NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps, and Russian Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin travel aboard the new SpaceX Crew-8 commercial mission.
These flights began in 2020 and have allowed the United States to send astronauts from American soil again after the cancellation of the space shuttle program in 2011.
Since the last flight of the shuttle Atlantis into Earth orbit in 2011, NASA has been forced to use only Russian launch systems, such as the Soyuz, to launch its astronauts into orbit.
Today’s launch is part of the Commercial Crew Program (CCP), which seeks to provide the United States with “safe, reliable and cost-effective human transportation” to and from the ISS through a partnership with American private industry.
This is the eighth rotational flight for a new crew, and the ninth human spaceflight mission on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft to the ISS for CCP.
If everything goes as planned, it is expected that the astronauts will arrive at the microgravity laboratory the day after their departure.
Like previous missions in the program, the astronauts will remain aboard the ISS for six months, living and working as part of what is expected to be a total of 11 crew members for a few days.
The current ISS crew, seven members of Expedition 70, are preparing to receive the quartet of Crew-8, which will dock at the forward port of the Harmony module. The new companions will investigate a multitude of space phenomena to improve the lives of humans living on and off Earth.
They will explore the mechanisms behind neurological disorders and ways to prevent fluid changes that occur in astronauts living in space.
The four astronauts are scheduled to make a one-day return trip orbiting Earth before splashing down off the coast of Florida, ending a six-and-a-half-month mission in space.
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