During a press conference on Thursday, March 31, NASA and SpaceX announced that they are pushing the Crew-4 mission launch date for a day due to a jam-packed schedule. The upcoming Crew-4 mission is set to fly three NASA astronauts and one astronaut from the European Space Agency.
Steve Stich, the manager of the Commercial Crew Program of NASA at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Texas, said that the delay would allow more time between the launch of the Crew-4 mission and the Ax-1 mission of Axiom Space, which will launch a private astronaut crew next week, on April 6.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule on launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on November 09, 2021 in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Busy Spring Delays Crew-4 Mission Launch
Dana Weigel, deputy manager for International Space Station (ISS) program at JSC, said that they decided to push back the launch of the Crew-4 mission because of the complexity of Axiom mission and they are still not done with the preparations for the Crew-4. She added that they have an "extremely busy spring." Stich said the Crew-4 mission will launch on April 20, two weeks after the AX-1 mission launch.
Space.com reported that the new launch date is scheduled to lift off at 6:37 a.m. ET (1037 GMT) from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida and is expected to dock to the ISS around 6 a.m. ET (1000 GMT) on April 21.
NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren will serve as the commander for the Crew-4 mission, while Bob Hines will be the pilot, and Jessica Watkins will serve as the mission specialist. Meanwhile, Italian ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti will serve as a mission specialist.
The mission will be Cristoforetti and Lindgren's second spaceflight, while it will be the first for Watkins and Hines. It is even more special for Watkins because she will become the first Black woman to conduct a long-duration spaceflight.
"This is certainly an important milestone, I think both for our agency and for the country," Watkins said during the press conference. " I think it's really just a tribute to the legacy of the Black women astronauts who have come before me, as well as to the exciting future ahead."
They will fly aboard the new Dragon capsule named Freedom, which is the fourth SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle. Lindgren proudly shared during the press conference that the mission patch that features a dragonfly is designed by his daughter.
Expedition 67 Officially Starts to Work in the ISS
Expedition 67 has officially started after the undocking on Wednesday of three ISS crew members, according to SpaceRef. NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov spent 355 days in the space laboratory before going home. On the other hand, cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov spent about six months in the ISS.
Before they went home, Shkaplerov turned over the command of the space station to NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn who will lead Expedition 67 until his departure.
In a live conference during the undocking, he was joined by his crewmates to mark the start of the expedition and called upon the Crew-mission members to join them. For now, scientific experiments are ongoing in the space station while they wait for the Crew-4 mission on April 20.
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