2023-08-25 05:18:31
An American astronaut, a Dane, a Japanese and a Russian cosmonaut are to take off overnight from Thursday to Friday to the International Space Station, the seventh regular crew rotation mission operated by SpaceX for NASA.
Take-off is due to take place from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 3:50 a.m. local time Friday (9:50 a.m. in Brussels), aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from billionaire Elon Musk’s company. The weather forecast is 90% favorable. A fallback window is however possible on Saturday in the event of an impediment.
Powered by the rocket, the Dragon capsule in which the four passengers will travel must dock with the International Space Station (ISS) following a trip of regarding a day. The crew will then stay for regarding six months on board this flying laboratory, where they will carry out multiple scientific experiments.
Called Crew-7, the mission is commanded by American astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, 40, who will be making his first trip to space. “What I’m most looking forward to is looking at our planet from above,” the Iranian-born MIT graduate told a news conference last month.
The astronaut of the European Space Agency (ESA) Andreas Mogensen, and of the Japanese agency (Jaxa) Satoshi Furukawa have already both visited the ISS, although for only ten days for the first.
It will also be the first flight for Russian Konstantin Borisov, who said he was looking forward to “this adventure” following “very intense training”.
Despite diplomatic tensions at their height between Washington and Moscow since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the collaboration between the American and Russian space agencies continues in the ISS, one of the rare subjects of cooperation still in progress between the two country.
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