NASA and SpaceX Crew-6 mission ready for launch tonight

By Georgina Torbet Published February 26, 2023

NASA and SpaceX are ready to launch four astronauts to the International Space Station, with preparations underway and launch scheduled for late tonight PT. The Crew-6 mission is set to launch at 1:45 a.m. ET on Monday, February 27 (10:45 p.m. PT on Sunday, February 26) from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida using a SpaceX Cargo Dragon and Falcon 9 rocket.

In a press conference following a readiness review on Saturday, February 25, NASA officials said that the crew and hardware had been given the go-ahead. “We had a good launch readiness review and we’re on track for the 27 launch,” said Dana Weigel, deputy manager of the International Space Station Program at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “This morning I had a chance to talk to the crew. They’re doing great. Spirits are high and they are ready to go.”

From left, NASA astronauts Warren “Woody” Hoburg and Stephen Bowen, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev and UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, prepare to depart the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida during a dress rehearsal for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-6 mission launch on Thursday, Feb. 23, 2023. — From left, NASA astronauts Warren “Woody” Hoburg and Stephen Bowen, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev and United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, prepare to depart the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on February 23 during a dress rehearsal for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-6 mission launch. NASA/Joel Kowsky

The mission will see four new cre members delivered to the ISS: NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren “Woody” Hoburg, United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. They will stay on the station for approximately six months, working on a variety of scientific research projects and on station maintenance and upgrades.

Recommended Videos

They will become part of the ISS Expedition 68 crew, joining NASA’s Nicole Aunapu Mann and Josh Cassada, Japanese space agency JAXA’s Koichi Wakata, Roscomos’ Anna Kikina, and for a short time, NASA’s Francisco Rubio and Roscosmos’ Dmitriy Petelin and Sergey Prokopyev.

The unusually high number of people on the station will only be temporary as Rubio, Petelin, and Prokopyev will soon be returning to Earth on board a recently arrived Russian Soyuz spacecraft that was sent to replace one that sprung a leak.

The launch of the Crew-6 mission has been delayed by 24 hours due to minor issues with the launch vehicle, but officials said these have now been resolved and the hardware is ready to fly. Space Force weather officer Brian Cizek said that there was 95% probability of favorable weather for the launch.

The launch of the mission will be livestreamed, and if you want to watch at home, we have details on how to watch the coverage , which begins at 10:15 p.m. ET (7:15 p.m. PT) tonight.

Georgina Torbet

Former Space Writer

Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…

Topics

Tech News

Space

Elon Musk’ Starlink could soon offer mobile services as a US carrier

Showcase of T-Mobile Starlink service on an iPhone.

Elon Musk’s Starlink has already changed how millions of people access the internet, especially in places where traditional broadband struggles to reach. Now, the satellite internet service could be preparing for an even bigger leap — becoming your mobile carrier.

According to a Financial Times report, SpaceX has told investors it’s considering launching a retail Starlink mobile service in the US. Instead of simply partnering with wireless carriers, the company could begin selling mobile plans directly to consumers, putting it in direct competition with Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile.

Space

Lightsails have hit another speed bump on the road to interstellar travel

The coolest interstellar travel idea may get betrayed by the light pushing it

LightSail in Earth orbit

Laser-powered lightsails are one of the coolest answers to spaceflight. It might not be as sci-fi-sounding as a warp drive, but now, its practicality has also come under question. Using lightsails, a spacecraft could unfurl an ultra-thin reflective sail and let a powerful laser push it toward another star, without relying on fuel.

The tech was simple and elegant--except it's also more complicated than it sounds. A new preprint from researchers Chao Shen and Jiaze Li of the Harbin Institute of Technology suggests that relativistic lightsails may run into a hidden propulsion problem once they start moving extremely fast.

Space

The galaxy has an exoplanet size mystery, and NASA’s EVE mission wants to solve it

This planet-hunting mission wants to catch baby worlds before they grow up

Artist’s Illustration of Exoplanets Orbiting Barnard’s Star

Mankind venturing into space ended up creating more questions than it answered, and one of the dilemmas is related to the planet sizes. Astronomers have found plenty of rocky super-Earths and plenty of puffier sub-Neptunes, but far fewer planets with a radius of about 1.8 times Earth’s.

That gap is known as the radius valley, and a proposed mission called the Early eVolution Explorer, or EVE, wants to figure out why it exists. NASA has a simple plan: look at planets while they are still young. The mission concept, detailed in a new arXiv preprint and covered by Phys.org, would focus on newly formed star clusters to see what small planets look like before billions of years of evolution.