NASA and SpaceX will launch four crewmembers to the International Space Station (ISS) at just after midday ET on Thursday.
Blasting off from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, along with Japan’s Kimiya Yui and Russia’s Oleg Platonov, will be traveling inside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft.
Endeavour will set a new record, too, breaking its own one for the most missions flown by a Crew Dragon capsule. Endeavour’s sixth flight on Thursday comes just over five years after its first flight for the historic Demo-2 mission that took two NASA astronauts to the space station in the Dragon’s first-ever crewed flight. After thorough checks and maintenance, Endeavour has flown one a year since then, carrying Crew-2, Ax-1, Crew-6, and Crew-8 to orbit.
Acknowledging this week’s record flight, Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, recently described the launch as “a really important mission for us … we worked very hard with SpaceX to complete all the reuse activities for this vehicle.” Stich said that SpaceX’s Dragon capsule had originally been certified for only five flights but that the necessary work had been done to prepare Endeavour for another mission, adding, “and we’re really ready to go.”
SpaceX has four other Crew Dragon capsules in operation. Resilience, Endurance, and Freedom have each flown four times, while Grace, SpaceX’s newest and final Crew Dragon, has only flown once to date.
NASA is hoping eventually to transition to SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft for crewed flights, a vehicle designed for missions to the moon and beyond. But the Starship is still very much in the test phase and so it could be some time before it becomes operational.
NASA could also deploy the Boeing-made Starliner for flights to near-Earth orbit, but issues with the capsule during a test flight in 2024 has jeopardized the plan.
