Early Monday, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch towards the International Space Station, carrying two NASA astronauts, a Russian cosmonaut, and the second Emirati to go to orbit. The SpaceX Dragon Crew-6 mission is scheduled to launch from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center at 1:45 a.m. (0645 GMT). The weather is supposed to be near ideal.
If all goes as planned, the Crew Dragon spacecraft, named Endeavour, will dock with the ISS at 2:38 a.m. (0738 GMT) on Tuesday. NASA’s Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg, Russia’s Andrey Fedyaev, and UAE’s Sultan al-Neyadi will spend six months aboard the orbiting space station. Neyadi, 41, will be the fourth Arab astronaut to go to space, and the second from the oil-rich United Arab Emirates; his countryman Hazzaa al-Mansoori conducted an eight-day mission in 2019.
The planned expedition was regarded as a “huge honour” by Neyadi. Hoburg, the Endeavour pilot, and Fedyaev, the Russian mission expert, will both fly in space for the first time. Fedyaev is the second Russian astronaut to go to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX rocket. NASA astronauts go to the station in Russian Soyuz spacecraft on a regular basis.
Since the Russian advance in Ukraine pitted the two capitals squarely against one other, space has remained a rare platform for collaboration between Moscow and Washington. Notwithstanding the tensions, such conversations have persisted. Bowen, a three-time space shuttle mission veteran, said politics seldom come up in orbit.
“We’re all experts in our fields. We remain focused on the objective at hand “said the mission leader. “Once in space, we’ve always had a terrific connection with cosmonauts.”
Crew-6 members will undertake scores of experiments while onboard the ISS, including research into how materials burn in microgravity and heart, brain, and cartilage functioning. The present crew is the sixth to be delivered to the ISS by a SpaceX rocket. The Endeavour spacecraft has gone three times into space. NASA pays the commercial SpaceX firm every six months to transport humans to the flying laboratory.
The space agency anticipates a several-day transfer with the four members of SpaceX Dragon Crew-5, who have been stationed on the ISS since October. After that, Crew-5 will return to Earth.
The rescue capsule
Russian cosmonauts Dmitry Petelin and Sergei Prokopyev, as well as American astronaut Frank Rubio, are now onboard the ISS. They were supposed to come home on March 28, but their Soyuz MS-22 capsule’s cooling system was damaged by a minor meteoroid in mid-December while docked with the ISS. MS-23, an unmanned Russian Soyuz spacecraft, lifted out from Kazakhstan on Friday to return the three astronauts home. They will now be returning to Earth in September.
The International Space Station (ISS) was launched in 1998, during a period of greater US-Russia collaboration after the Cold War space competition. Since the 1960s, Russia has used the elderly but dependable Soyuz capsules to transport humans into space. Yet, in recent years, Russia’s space programme has been plagued by a slew of issues that have resulted in the loss of satellites and vehicles.
You might also be interested in reading, Innovative air filter collects a broad range of contaminants
