NASA continuing with August launch of Crew-9

WASHINGTON — NASA is urgent forward with a mid-August launch of the subsequent Crew Dragon mission whereas delaying the primary operational flight of Starliner.

At a July 26 briefing, NASA officers stated they had been concentrating on no sooner than Aug. 18 for the launch of the Crew-9 mission to the Worldwide House Station. That date had been in query after an higher stage anomaly on a Falcon 9 Starlink launch that grounded the rocket for 15 days.

On the briefing, held earlier than the rocket’s profitable return to flight early July 27, NASA praised SpaceX for being “very clear” concerning the investigation into the incident and deliberate modifications to the higher stage to stop the reason for the anomaly — a crack in a sensor line that allowed liquid oxygen to leak — from occurring once more.

That schedule, stated Steve Stich, NASA industrial crew program supervisor, will depend upon a test-firing of the higher stage for use on the Crew-9 launch scheduled for round July 30. That check will “try among the new modifications that the car can have a results of the anomaly,” he stated.

“We’re going to undergo a rigorous certification of that,” he stated of the modifications to the higher stage, together with each {hardware} modifications and modifications to software program that can not use knowledge from the eliminated sensor. “We’ll undergo that and take it to this system management board, and we’ll baseline that change for Crew-9.”

He added that NASA will benefit from a number of Falcon 9 launches with the change forward of Crew-9. SpaceX has already carried out three launches, every carrying Starlink satellites, with the upper-stage modification. There are extra on the manifest, together with the launch of a Cygnus cargo spacecraft to the ISS as quickly as Aug. 3.

At a separate briefing July 26, the four-person crew of Crew-9 — NASA astronauts Zena Cardman, Nick Hague and Stephanie Wilson and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexsandr Gorbunov — stated they’d no reservations on launching on a Falcon 9 weeks after the higher stage anomaly.

“I’m extraordinarily assured within the staff and the method they’ve taken,” stated Hague, the pilot for Crew-9 who additionally skilled an in-flight abort on a Soyuz mission to the ISS in 2018. “I’m excited to strap onto the rocket when the staff decides it’s time to go.”

The launch interval for Crew-9 runs to early September, Stich stated. That’s pushed by the necessity to flip round Launch Advanced 39A for a Falcon Heavy launch of the Europa Clipper mission, which has a three-week launch window that opens Oct. 10.

Scheduling conflicts about using LC-39A was one think about SpaceX’s determination to construct a crew and cargo entry tower at practically House Launch Advanced 40. Nevertheless, the pad is not going to be licensed for crewed missions in time for Crew-9, Stich stated.

“We’re not fairly full on certification. If we had been, we might entertain transferring over to Pad 40,” he stated, estimating that the certification work could be full in late September.

Sarah Walker, director of Dragon mission administration at SpaceX, recommended that it might need been doable to get SLC-40 licensed in time for Crew-9, however added it wasn’t vital for this mission. “We have now a number of weeks of runway on 39A,” she stated. “I wouldn’t say that we’re working out of time or that there’s not sufficient room to launch Crew-9 when it must be launched.”

The Falcon 9 incident did have an effect on the schedule for an additional Crew Dragon mission. Earlier than the anomaly, SpaceX was concentrating on the top of July for the launch of Polaris Daybreak, a personal astronaut mission that can fly 4 individuals on a Crew Dragon and conduct the primary non-public spacewalk. That mission is a part of the Polaris program funded by Jared Isaacman, who will command Polaris Daybreak.

“We’re in closing preparations for Polaris Daybreak,” Walker stated. “We opted to fly the Crew-9 mission as our subsequent mission and are able to fly Polaris Daybreak in late summer season.” She stated later within the briefing that SpaceX was nonetheless planning for an August launch of Polaris Daybreak.

The timing for these missions may also depend upon Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft docked to the station on the Crew Flight Take a look at (CFT) mission. To permit for what NASA calls a “direct” handover, with Crew-9 arriving earlier than Crew-8 departs, Starliner should depart to unencumber a docking port.

On the briefing, Stich stated that the primary operational Starliner mission, referred to as Starliner-1, is not scheduled to launch in February 2025 as beforehand deliberate. The Crew-10 mission will as a substitute launch then to permit NASA and Boeing extra time to assessment knowledge from the CFT mission and make any modifications to the spacecraft.

He stated Starliner-1 has been rescheduled for August 2025, however he added that the mission will probably be “double booked” with Crew-11, presumably to guard for any extra delays with Starliner.

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