The Crew-5 team will be welcomed by seven existing ISS occupants - the Crew-4 team consisting of three Americans and an Italian astronaut - as well as two Russians and the NASA astronaut who flew with them to orbit on a Soyuz flight. Rounding out the crew from Japan's space agency JAXA is veteran astronaut Koichi Wakata, 59, a robotics expert making his fifth voyage to space. The designated pilot for Wednesday's launch is Mann's NASA astronaut classmate and fellow spaceflight rookie Josh Cassada, 49, a US Navy aviator and test pilot with a doctorate in high-energy particle physics. The only other indigenous American launched to orbit was John Herrington, who flew on a 2002 shuttle mission. She also is among the first group of 18 astronauts selected for NASA's upcoming Artemis missions, aimed at returning humans to the moon later this decade, over half a century after the Apollo lunar program ended.Īs a registered member of the Wailacki of the Round Valley Indian Tribes, Mann will become the first Native American woman to fly to space. Musk says SpaceX discussed iPhone satellite service with AppleĬommander Mann, a US Marine Corps colonel and a fighter pilot who flew combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, holds an engineering master's degree specializing in fluid mechanics. Saudi Arabia buys pair of SpaceX astronaut seats from Axiom -sources.Saudi mission on SpaceX capsule to include first female Arab astronaut.Kikina is essentially swapping places with a NASA astronaut who took her seat aboard a Russian Soyuz flight to the ISS last month under a new ride-sharing deal signed by NASA and Roscosmos in July. The last cosmonaut to ride a US rocketship to orbit was in 2002 on a NASA space shuttle. The Crew-5 mission is also notable for the inclusion of Anna Kikina, 38, the lone female cosmonaut on active duty with the Russian space agency Roscosmos, making a rare flight aboard an American spacecraft despite heightened US-Russian tensions over the war in Ukraine. The latest team is being led by Nicole Aunapu Mann, 45, a veteran combat pilot making spaceflight history as both the first indigenous woman being sent to orbit by NASA and the first woman to take the commander's seat of a SpaceX Crew Dragon.Īs mission control wished the crew "Godspeed, Endurance," Mann radioed back, "Awesome, Falcon team. The mission, designated Crew-5, marks the fifth full-fledged ISS crew NASA has flown aboard a SpaceX vehicle since the private rocket venture founded by Tesla owner Musk began sending US astronauts aloft in May 2020. The four-member crew and their autonomously flying capsule were expected to reach the International Space Station (ISS) in about 29 hours, on Thursday evening, to begin a 150-day science mission aboard the orbital laboratory some 250 miles (420 km) above Earth. The reusable lower-stage booster, meanwhile, flew itself back to Earth and landed safely on a drone recovery vessel floating at sea. The SpaceX launch vehicle, consisting of a Falcon 9 rocket topped with a Crew Dragon capsule dubbed Endurance, lifted off into clear skies at noon EDT (1600 GMT) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.Ī live NASA webcast of the blastoff showed the two-stage, 23-story-tall Falcon 9 ascending from the launch tower as its nine Merlin engines roared to life in billowing clouds of vapor and a reddish fireball.Ībout nine minutes after launch, the rocket's upper stage delivered the Crew Dragon into a suitable preliminary orbit. Florida: Elon Musk's rocket company SpaceX on Wednesday launched from Florida the next long-duration crew of the International Space Station for NASA, including a Russian cosmonaut hitching a ride with two Americans and a Japanese astronaut as part of the mission.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |