Jakarta (ANTARA) – Elon Musk’s businessman rocket company, SpaceX, will launch the next long-duration crew of astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA on Wednesday (27/4) local time, including a medical doctor who became a space explorer. and a geologist who specializes in landslides for Mars.
SpaceX’s launch vehicle consisting of a Falcon 9 rocket, split in two stages topped with a Crew Dragon capsule dubbed the Freedom, is set to lift off with its four crew members at 3:52 AM from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
If all goes according to plan, three US astronauts and a European Space Agency (ESA) crew from Italy will reach the space station about 17 hours later to begin a six-month science mission orbiting about 250 miles (420 kilometers) above. Earth.
During a pre-launch meeting, NASA officials said forecasts called for a 90 percent chance with favorable weather conditions for a timely liftoff.
“Flying safely with a crew means you have to take it one step at a time,” said NASA associate administrator for space operations Kathryn Lueders.
Read also: Russian director wants film production on moon and Mars
Read also: Iran space launch fails to put payload into orbit
“We hope you will see a very, very beautiful step, and we will bring our crew safely into orbit,” he added.
This latest mission will mark the fourth ISS crew that NASA has sent into orbit on a SpaceX vehicle since flying US space agency astronauts in 2020.
In all, SpaceX has launched six previous human spaceflights over the past two years.
The composition of members for Crew 4 is Dr. Kjell Lindgren, 49, commander of the mission, a board-certified emergency medicine physician and surgeon, has made one flight and will make his second trip to the ISS, noting that he spent 141 days in orbit in 2015.
During the expedition, he made two space trips and participated in more than 100 science projects, including the “Veggie” lettuce experiment which marked the first time a member of a US crew member ate a plant grown in orbit.
The pilot designated for the mission was rookie astronaut Bob Hines, 47, a US Air Force fighter pilot, test pilot and flight instructor who has accumulated more than 3,500 hours of flight time on 50 aircraft types and has flown 76 combat missions.
Another crew member who made his space debut as a mission specialist was Jessica Watkins, 33, a geologist who earned a doctorate studying the processes behind massive landslides on Mars and Earth and later joined the science team for the Mars Curiosity rover at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. .
Flight Crew 4 will make Watkins the first African-American woman to join a long-range mission on the International Space Station.
He follows in the footsteps of just seven other black astronauts who have flown to the ISS since it was founded more than two decades ago.
Ending Crew 4 is Samantha Cristoforetti, 45, an ESA astronaut and Italian Air Force jet pilot who made his second flight to the space station and is scheduled to take command of ISS operations during the team’s six-month stint, becoming the first woman in Europe to be stationed there.
Cristoforetti and Watkins previously served together as aquanauts in the underwater habitat of Aquarius from NASA’s Extreme Environment Mission (NEEMO) mission in 2019.
The Crew 4 team will be greeted on board by the seven existing occupants of the ISS, the four members of Crew 3 they will replace namely three American astronauts and a German ESA crew who will conclude their mission in early May 2021 as well as three cosmonauts from Russia.
Read also: US launches first private astronaut mission to ISS
Read also: NASA astronauts return to Earth from the ISS with Russian cosmonauts
Read also: NASA plans to retire ISS space station by 2030
Reporter: Livia Kristianti
Editor: Alviansyah Pasaribu
COPYRIGHT © ANTARA 2022
–
