Minutes before a warm front brought heavy showers to Kennedy Space Center, SpaceX launched Crew Dragon aboard a Falcon 9 for Axiom Space on a chartered flight to the International Space Station at 4:49 PM EST this evening. The all-European crew is expected to dock at ISS in two days time, and stay aboard the station until February 3, 2024.
Axiom Space’s Chief Astronaut Michael López-Alegría is the mission commander, and the 65 year old NASA veteran is now on his fifth spaceflight. He is dual-citizen U.S. and Spain. Mission pilot is Italian Air Force Col. Walter Villadei, and the two mission specialists are Alper Gezeravcı of Türkiye and ESA project astronaut Marcus Wandt of Sweden. Villadei, Gezeravcı, and Wandt have extensive flight crew experience and have all served in their nation’s Air Forces.
Today’s successful launch came after a one-day delay. With roughly six hours left in the countdown yesterday, SpaceX called for a one-day delay to “allow teams to complete pre-launch checkouts and data analysis on the vehicle.” No other reason was given at the time.
In a January 16th press conference, however, SpaceX did outline some areas of concern: first, parachutes in an uncrewed Dragon mission had performed differently than expected and secondly, the connectors that mate the Crew Dragon capsule to Falcon 9 were torqued incorrectly. While those concerns were not cited in today’s announcement, they may be what mission managers and engineers want to review before committing to a crewed flight.
After completing its job of lofting Crew Dragon off of the launch pad and sending it on its way to orbit, Booster B1080 completed its work by safely touching down at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Landing Zone 1. Previously the booster has also launched the Axiom-2 mission, thw Euclid space telescope as well as two Starlink missions.
As usual, the returning booster announced its arrival back to solid ground with twin sonic booms that were heard for dozens of miles around the Space Coast region.
Note: article was originally published at Talk of Titusville.