Joining the live video podcast on Friday, April 5, are Emilee Speck, space journalist with FOX Weather, and Stephen Clark, space reporter with Ars Technica. The show begins at 4 p.m. EDT (2000 UTC) on the Spaceflight Now YouTube channel.
The mission to the orbiting outpost featured three NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut who will spend roughly 180 days on the space station. Liftoff occurred at 10:53 p.m. EST (0353 UTC) from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
The slide system differs notably from the slide wire basket system used over at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. NASA officials said pad 40 will be ready for astronaut launches this year.
Two of the four crew members will exit a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft using spacesuits currently under development. The launch is set for no earlier than early 2024.
An international four-man crew strapped into a SpaceX capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket at the Kennedy Space Center Tuesday for a dress-rehearsal countdown. The launch of the privately-funded research mission to the International Space Station has been delayed until Thursday.
The mission will be the sixth trip to the orbiting outpost for Ax-3 Commander Michael López-Alegría and the first for the other three crew members. Launch is planned for Wednesday, Jan. 17, at 5:11 p.m. EST (2211 UTC).
Spaceflight Now editor Stephen Clark spoke live to International Space Station astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur about their mission Friday.
NASA and Houston-based Axiom Space have signed a “mission order” setting the stage for four civilians to visit to the International Space Station early next year, the first fully commercial flight to the orbiting lab complex, agency managers said Monday.
Four astronauts strapped into their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, undocked from the International Space Station and plunged to a fiery pre-dawn splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico Sunday, closing out the first operational flight of SpaceX’s futuristic touch-screen ferry ship.