NASA and SpaceX launched the eighth manned mission to the International Space Station from Florida

2024-03-04 05:07:00
NASA and SpaceX launched the eighth manned mission to the International Space Station from Florida

The eighth manned commercial mission from NASA and SpaceX to the International Space Station (ISS) took off this Sunday from Florida, composed of three Americans and one Russian, after the launch was postponed twice due to strong winds at the takeoff center.

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The launch took place this Sunday as planned, at 10:53 p.m. local time on the east coast of the United States (3:53 GMT) from the Kennedy Space Center, in central Florida, aboard a Dragon spacecraft, the Endeavour. , from platform 39A powered by a Falcon 9 rocket.

NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps, and Russian Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin travel aboard the new SpaceX Crew-8 commercial mission.

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These flights began in 2020 and have allowed the United States to send astronauts from American soil again after the cancellation of the space shuttle program in 2011.

NASA and SpaceX launched the eighth manned mission to the International Space Station from Florida (REUTERS/Joe Skipper)

Since the last flight of the shuttle Atlantis into Earth orbit in 2011, NASA had been forced to use only Russian launch systems such as the Soyuz to launch its astronauts into orbit.

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This Sunday’s launch is part of the Commercial Crew Program (CCP), which seeks to provide “safe, reliable and cost-effective human transportation” from the United States to and from the ISS through a partnership with American private industry.

This is the eighth rotational flight for a new crew, and the ninth human spaceflight mission on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft to the ISS for CCP.

If everything goes as planned, the astronauts are expected to arrive at the microgravity laboratory this Monday.

Like previous missions in the program, the astronauts will remain aboard the ISS for six months, living and working as part of what is expected to be a total of 11 crew members for a few days.

The current ISS crew, seven members of Expedition 70, are preparing to receive the quartet of Crew-8, which will dock at the forward port of the Harmony module.

The launch took place this Sunday as planned, at 10:53 p.m. local time on the east coast of the United States (REUTERS/Joe Skipper)

The new companions will investigate a multitude of space phenomena to improve the lives of humans living on and off Earth.

They will explore the mechanisms behind neurological disorders and ways to prevent fluid changes that occur in astronauts living in space.

They will also look at how microgravity affects plant growth, and the role of algae in improving spacecraft life support systems.

In the ISS, the new travelers seek to relieve, about seven days after their arrival, the crew members of the SpaceX Crew-7 Jasmin Moghbeli, Andreas Mogensen, from the European Space Agency (ESA), Satoshi Furukawa, from the Japanese JAXA, and Konstantin Borisov, from Roscosmos.

NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps, and Russian Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin travel aboard the new SpaceX Crew-8 commercial mission (EFE/Cristóbal Herrera)

These four members, who have been aboard the space station since last August 27, will disconnect from the spaceport aboard a Dragon spacecraft, the Endurance, at a date not yet established.

The four astronauts are scheduled to make a one-day return trip orbiting Earth before splashing down off the coast of Florida, ending a six-and-a-half month mission in space.

For their part, the four new crew members will return to Earth in six months aboard the Dragon ship, which will also land in one of the landing zones in the ocean off the coast of Florida.

In 2020, SpaceX carried out Demo-2, which was a historic mission that allowed astronauts to be sent from United States soil to the ISS nine years after its space shuttle program was canceled.

In Demo-2, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley traveled to the ISS in May 2020 and returned to Earth in the same capsule, which fell into the Gulf of Mexico in a controlled and safe manner that same year.

(With information from EFE)

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