WASHINGTON | Two days following a SpaceX ship splashed down off Florida with a crew of businessmen on board, a new flight from Elon Musk’s company is due to take off early Wednesday, this time for a NASA mission to the International Space Station (ISS).
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If the favorable weather window is confirmed, the mission dubbed “Crew-4” should take off from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, at 03:52 local time (07:52 GMT) with on board the Americans Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines and Jessica Watkins , as well as the Italian Samantha Cristoforetti, from the European Space Agency.
The shooting will be broadcast live on the NASA website.
SpaceX plans the launch less than 40 hours following picking up another crew, another acceleration in the flight schedule since Elon Musk’s company became NASA’s taxi to the ISS.
Between the end of the US space shuttle in 2011 and 2020, Americans relied on Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
The four astronauts of “Crew-4” will join another crew up there who sees their return to Earth approaching following a five-month mission, and whose return date will soon be known.
Three Russians are also present on board the ISS.
The new crew will set up and monitor hundreds of experiments in weightlessness, notably on plants or an artificial human retina project.
Jessica Watkins will be only the fifth black woman to go into space, and the first to join the space station for a long mission.
She and her three crewmates are expected to reach the ISS around 17 hours following liftoff, with docking scheduled for 12:15 a.m. GMT on Thursday.
