WASHINGTON — Delays within the completion of a brand new Crew Dragon spacecraft will lengthen the keep of astronauts on the International Space Station by a month, together with two who’ve been there since June.
NASA introduced Dec. 17 that it was delaying the launch of the Crew-10 mission to the ISS, beforehand scheduled for February, to no sooner than late March. NASA, in its assertion, cited the necessity to present further time to finish a brand new Dragon spacecraft that can be used for the mission.
“Fabrication, meeting, testing, and closing integration of a brand new spacecraft is a painstaking endeavor that requires nice consideration to element,” stated Steve Stich, NASA industrial crew program supervisor, in a press release. “We respect the laborious work by the SpaceX workforce to develop the Dragon fleet in assist of our missions and the pliability of the station program and expedition crews as we work collectively to finish the brand new capsule’s readiness for flight.”
The new Crew Dragon would be the fifth in SpaceX’s fleet, together with three cargo Dragon spacecraft. “It’s virtually accomplished,” stated Sarah Walker, director of Dragon mission administration at SpaceX, in a July briefing. At the time she stated the spacecraft was finishing closing work at SpaceX’s Hawthorne, California, manufacturing unit and can be shipped to Florida “shortly” for closing preparations. At the identical briefing, Stich stated the spacecraft was slated for the Crew-10 mission, then deliberate for February.
NASA, in its assertion in regards to the delay, stated the brand new Crew Dragon was now anticipated to reach in SpaceX’s Florida processing facility in January. The company didn’t elaborate on particular points that triggered the delay.
NASA stated it thought-about choices, together with utilizing a distinct Crew Dragon spacecraft and unspecified “manifest changes,” earlier than deciding on the delay. In addition to the Crew Dragon spacecraft Freedom, at present on the ISS for Crew-9, two others, Endeavour and Resilience, not too long ago returned to Earth after the Crew-8 and Polaris Dawn missions, respectively, and certain wouldn’t be prepared for a February launch.
Crew-10 will nonetheless fly with the identical crew: NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov.
The delay does give further time in area for the Crew-9 crew. That Crew Dragon launched with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov in late September. After arriving on the station, NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore formally joined the crew. NASA elected in August to have Williams and Wilmore, who arrived on the station in June on Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner, to stay on the station and return the Starliner to Earth uncrewed due to considerations with the spacecraft’s thrusters.
Wilmore and Williams are steadily described as being “caught” or “stranded” on the station, though NASA has steadily famous that two have at all times had the means to return to Earth in an emergency. However, this newest delay implies that their time on the ISS, initially scheduled to be as quick as eight days, can be prolonged to round 10 months, assuming a launch of Crew-10 in late March and a return of Crew-9, after a handover interval on the ISS, in early April.
The plan to make use of a brand new Crew Dragon is one motive why Wilmore and Williams didn’t return sooner. At a briefing in September, Stich stated that NASA thought-about numerous choices for returning the astronauts, and concluded that doing so on Crew-9 was the only option, one which required eradicating two astronauts initially assigned to the mission.
“We might schedule it a little bit shorter,” he stated of the Crew-9 mission, having it return ahead of February to shorten the prolonged keep of the Starliner astronauts, “however then we’d must have one other car prepared.” He advised then that preparations for the brand new Crew Dragon didn’t make it possible to maneuver up the Crew-10 launch.
