The Crew-5 mission successfully launched on October 5 at noon US East Coast time and the first stage booster landed safely on the autonomous drone ship. Now the crew is on its way to the ISS.
The launch was delayed a few days by the devastating Hurricane Ian that swept through Florida last week, and today the historic Crew-5 mission, carrying four astronauts, lifted off successfully from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. 9.5 minutes after launch, the booster landed on the autonomous drone ship. It was the first ever landing of the booster, which made its debut in space today.
Falcon 9’s first stage booster has landed on the Just Read the Instructions droneship pic.twitter.com/qKk3uk4J9B
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 5, 2022
The second stage worked normally and successfully delivered the ship to the planned orbit
Well
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Crew-4 on orbit pic.twitter.com/pNlRTTdSYE
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 27, 2022
SpaceX’s Dragon Endurance spacecraft has launched with four astronauts on board, two of whom are on their first ever spaceflight. The crew includes NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Kassada. Mann will go down in history as the first NASA Native American to go into space, and she will also be the first female Dragon crew capsule commander.
Crew-5 is go for launch pic.twitter.com/gfVxhtLrdC
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 5, 2022
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Koichi Wakata and Anna Kikina from Roscosmos also joined the flight.
NASA agreed with Roskosmos on “cross flights” to the ISS
The crew will stay on the ISS for approximately six months, during which the astronauts will conduct research. Experiments will include studies on printing human organs in space, studying fuel systems that work on the moon, and studying heart disease. These are just some of the more than 200 science experiments and technology demonstrations that will take place during their mission.
They are due to dock with the space lab at 4:57 pm ET on Thursday, October 6. This quartet will meet the station’s current crew of seven, four of whom are members of the SpaceX Crew-4 mission . After the departure of the astronauts of the previous mission from the ISS in a few days, command will pass from the astronaut of the European Space Agency Samantha Cristoforette to Nicole Mann.
As usual, you could watch the launch from the initial preparatory stage on the SpaceX live stream or on the NASA website.
Crew-5 marks the eighth mission with astronauts for SpaceX, with two more scheduled for late spring 2023.
Crew-5 is also Elon Musk’s 44th orbital launch in 2022. SpaceX plans to implement two more in the near future. Tomorrow, the company is due to launch a large batch of its Starlink internet satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and two commercial communications satellites from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Source: Space, The Verge
