[NASA and SpaceX have delayed the launch by about 24 hours. The new launch time has been added below.]
Next weekend will see the launch of an international crew of four astronauts who will be traveling to the International Space Station (ISS) for a stay of about seven months.
The Crew-6 mission includes an astronaut from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), who will become the second UAE astronaut to stay at the ISS after a different UAE astronaut visited the space station for eight days in 2019.
The launch of the crew using a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft and a Falcon 9 rocket will be live streamed by NASA, so we’ve got the details on how to watch below.
What to expect from the launch
The launch will carry four astronauts to the ISS: NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg, plus United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Al Neyadi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.
The SpaceX Crew Dragon will launch from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, traveling throughout Monday before arriving at the ISS early on Tuesday morning.
This is the sixth crew mission to the ISS launched by SpaceX, following the Crew-5 launch in October last year, which carried NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada to the ISS, along with Japanese space agency JAXA’s Koichi Wakata and Roscosmos’s Anna Kikina.
How to watch the launch
The launch, along with various prelaunch information sessions, will be livestreamed by NASA via the NASA TV channel. To watch the event, you can either use the video embedded near the top of this page or head over to NASA TV’s YouTube page.
The launch itself is scheduled for very early in the morning of Monday, February 27, but coverage will begin at 10 p.m. ET (7 p.m. PT) on Sunday, February 26. Liftoff is scheduled for 1:45 a.m. ET on Monday (10:45 p.m. PT on Sunday).
It’s also possible to watch the arrival of the spacecraft in real time. Coverage of the Dragon’s arrival at the ISS will begin at 12:45 a.m. ET on Tuesday, February 28 (9:45 p.m. PT on Monday, February 27) with docking scheduled for around 2:45 a.m. ET (11:45 p.m. PT), followed by the hatch opening and welcome ceremony for the crew.
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