International crew flies to Florida spaceport for Friday launch to space station

The subsequent 4 crew members certain for a six-month keep aboard the Worldwide House Station flew to the Kennedy House Heart Sunday to arrange for launch early Friday atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

NASA’s Jasmin Moghbeli, the Crew-7 commander, European House Company astronaut Andreas Mogensen, Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa and Russian cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov landed on the outdated house shuttle runway round midday ET after a flight from the Johnson House Heart in Houston.

“You’ll be able to in all probability inform from the massive smiles on our faces that we’re extraordinarily excited to lastly be right here at Kennedy House Heart and for the journey we’re about to embark on,” stated Moghbeli, a Marine Corps helicopter check pilot and mom of two-and-a-half-year-old twin ladies.

Moghbeli and her crewmates plan to strap into their Crew Dragon capsule “Endurance” at historic pad 39A early Tuesday for a dress-rehearsal countdown. As soon as full and the crew is out of the spacecraft, SpaceX plans to check hearth the primary stage’s 9 Merlin engines to confirm the booster’s readiness for its first flight.

Assuming no issues crop up and the climate cooperates, the crew will strap in for actual Friday morning round 1:15 a.m. for a launch at 3:49 a.m. Moghbeli and Mogensen will monitor a sequence of automated rendezvous maneuvers resulting in a docking on the house station simply after 2 a.m. Saturday.

“That is our seventh operational mission to the Worldwide House Station beneath the Business Crew Program,” stated Kennedy House Heart Director Janet Petro. “And although we’ve got a strong manifest right here, we’re all the time tremendous excited when we’ll stick a human on the rocket. [It] all the time ups the extent of pleasure.”

Borisov and Moghbeli, a Marine lieutenant colonel with greater than 150 fight missions to her credit score, are making their first spaceflight. Mogensen visited the house station for 9 days in 2015 as a part of a short-duration Russian Soyuz swap-out flight whereas Furukawa logged 167 days aboard the outpost in 2011.

Borisov is the third Russian to fly aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon as a part of an settlement between NASA and Roscosmos, the Russian federal house company, to launch one NASA astronaut aboard every Soyuz flight to the station and one cosmonaut aboard every ISS-bound Crew Dragon.

The settlement ensures a minimum of one crew member from every nation is all the time aboard the station even when an emergency of some type pressured a Soyuz or Crew Dragon to depart early.

“If ever you have seen the proof of this being a global program, you are seeing it at present with this crew,” stated NASA Administrator Invoice Nelson, who welcomed the Crew-7 fliers to Florida. “Of all crews, that is probably the most worldwide that we have had, and I feel it exhibits the breadth of the cooperation across the globe.”

Stated Borisov: “I am honored to be a part of the worldwide crew as a result of it is probably the most worldwide crew ever. Skilled astronauts and cosmonauts, they are saying that while you go to the ISS and also you take a look at the planet, you see that there aren’t any borders. And actually, I need to proceed and to convey that feeling and that emotion and likewise to help the cooperation which we’ve got been having to this point.”

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