NASA and SpaceX plan to launch the Crew-9 mission mid-month.
SpaceX’s next astronaut launch for NASA, Crew 9, is currently scheduled for August 18. The four astronauts on board will be Commander Zena Cardman, pilot Nick Hague, mission specialist Stephanie Wilson, and mission specialist Alexander Gorbunov of the Russian Space Agency, Roscosmos.
The mission still needs final launch approval from NASA, after the second stage of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket failed due to an oxygen leak on July 11. The rocket has been cleared to fly and recently resumed uncrewed launches of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, but NASA wants to be sure the rocket is safe for crew members before the targeted Aug. 18 launch date.
“We’ve been following the investigation closely,” Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, said at the Crew 9 press conference on July 26.
Stich added that SpaceX has already replaced the sensor hardware that caused the July 11 oxygen leak on a different second stage rocket, and that NASA is confident that the change will allow Crew 9 to be approved for launch.
“We’re going to follow that testing and do the same testing on our stage, and we’re going to have that sensor checked during the second stage test,” Stich said. “We’re going to look at all the data, do all the analysis and certification, and then we’re going to be ready to fly.”
As the name suggests, Crew 9 will be the ninth astronaut rotation that SpaceX will fly to the ISS for NASA. But it will also be the 10th crewed flight of the Dragon spacecraft as part of the space agency’s Commercial Crew Program. The first flight was Demo-2, a two-astronaut test flight to the ISS that launched in May 2020.
Crew Dragon will also carry several private astronaut missions into orbit and to the ISS, including the historic all-civilian Inspiration 4 flight in 2021 and three flights by Houston-based Axiom Space.
