NASA, SpaceX to launch Crew-2 Astronauts to Space Station

SpaceX and NASA are “go” to proceed with launching four astronauts to the Space Station on April 22. April 22 is globally celebrated as Earth Day. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft will launch from historic Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

It will be the second flight of the particular Crew Dragon spacecraft. The same capsule named Endeavour carried NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to and from the Space Station last year from the Demo-2 test space flight. Inside the Crew Dragon spacecraft will be four Expedition 65 crewmembers, who will spend about six months in space. NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas Pesquet would be the four astronauts expediting such a glorifying mission.

“The flight readiness review was very successful; we only had one exception,” Kathy Lueders, NASA’s head of human spaceflight, said in a news conference Thursday. “It needs to be cleared up in the next few days because it’s got to get resolved before the static fire [test],” which is currently scheduled for Saturday (April 17), she added.

Bill Gerstenmaier, the vice president of build and reliability at SpaceX, said on the occasion that the teams have discovered that there was a minimal loading error. The agencies are urged to adding a little supply of oxygen in the tanks for the sustainability traversing astronauts. SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets use liquid oxygen and rocket-grade kerosene for propellant.  Gerstenmaier added that other Falcon 9 missions have been flying successfully in the identical configuration, but only recently discovered the issue while testing the rocket on the ground-based mission in Texas.