SpaceX launched a limited crew of two on a flight to the International Space Station on Saturday, along with supplies and a few empty seats for two Starliner astronauts waiting to hitch a ride home in February after an unexpected eight-and-a-half month stay in orbit.
Two days late due to high winds, rain and passing clouds Hurricane Helenethe SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket roared to life and blasted off from pad 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 1:17 p.m. EDT, climbing on a northeasterly trajectory directly into the plane of the space station's orbit.
Commander Nick Haag, an experienced NASA astronaut, and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov, monitored the automated ascent from the Crew Dragon "Freedom," which made its maiden flight.
Crew Dragons normally launched with four crew members, but two Crew 9 astronauts - Stephanie Wilson and Zena Cardman, the original commander - were removed from the flight in August to free up seats to be used by Starliner commander Barry "Butch" Wilmore and pilot Sunita Williams when the Crew Dragon returns to Earth in February.
Saturday's launch was the first piloted spaceflight from the Space Force Station since the early days of the Apollo moon program and the first ever for SpaceX, which launched 14 previous Crew Dragon missions from historic pad 39A at the nearby Kennedy Space Center.
After the Falcon 9 emerged from the dense lower atmosphere, the first stage, making its second flight, was programmed to fly back to the Space Force station landing seven minutes and 40 seconds after launch.
Four and a half minutes later, the Crew Dragon was expected to be released to fly independently, beginning a 28-hour rendezvous with the International Space Station. If all goes well, the spacecraft will dock in the laboratory's outer harbor on Sunday at 5:30 p.m.
Wilmore and Williams, who now serve as commander of the space station, are ready to welcome Hague and Gorbunov aboard, along with Soyuz MS-26/72S commander Aleksey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and NASA astronaut Don Pettit, who launched on September 11
Den Haag, Gorbunov, Wilmore and Williams will take the places of Crew 8 commander Matthew Dominick, Mike Barratt, Jeanette Epps and cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, who launched on March 3 and will return to Earth around October 7 to complete a 217-day stay in space.
In addition to bringing Hague and Gorbunov to the station, the Crew Dragon was packed with clothing, supplies and SpaceX pressure suits for Wilmore and Williams, who launched on June 5 during the Starliner's first piloted test flight.
The mission was initially expected to last eight to 10 days, but multiple helium leaks in the Starliner's propulsion system, along with reduced thrust in five maneuver aircraft, ultimately led to a decision by NASA to shoot down the spacecraft without a crew earlier this month.
Instead, NASA managers opted to launch the Crew 9 Dragon with just two of the original crew members so that the ship could return Wilmore and Williams to Earth at the end of its mission in February. By the time they land aboard the Crew 9 capsule around February 22, they will have spent more than 262 days in space.
"There have been a lot of changes in our specific crew, but the mission really hasn't changed," Den Haag said. "The mission hasn't changed in two and a half decades. It's to get to the station and do research, and that mission is bigger than any one crew."
But that doesn't mean the transition from four crew members to two, and his own transition from pilot to mission commander, won't be without challenges. Likewise, Wilmore and Williams must learn the ins and outs of flying aboard a Crew Dragon.
"We're going to launch as a two-person crew, and then we're going to land as a four-person crew," Den Haag said. "And one of the unique challenges of that is, how do we integrate the other two crew members into Dragon operations when they have had very minimal Dragon training before launch?
"The teams on the ground have not only helped us get ready, but they have already started helping Butch and Suni train to understand what they need to do in the Dragon. That will be the top priority as we get there and (help) them understand what they need to do to be able to operate as part of the Crew 9 crew."
Hague is a Space Force colonel, a former F-16 test pilot and combat veteran who spent 203 days in space on a previous mission. He also suffered a dramatic flight abort during launch aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 2018. His extensive experience likely played a major role in NASA's decision to put him in the commander's seat for the revised mission.
Gorbunov retained his seat aboard the Crew 9 Dragon under a contract between NASA and Roscosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency, in which Russia's three-seat Soyuz spacecraft carries one NASA astronaut on each flight to the ISS and becomes a cosmonaut launched on every four-seater. Crew Dragon.
That ensures that every country always has at least one crew member on board the laboratory, even if an emergency forces a ferry ship and its crew to make an unscheduled return to Earth. Gorbunov is not trained to serve as a Crew Dragon pilot, but he will be in the pilot's seat during the launch to assist The Hague.
"Essentially we're flying without a pilot, and so fundamentally the commander is responsible for keeping the crew safe, keeping the vehicle safe and making sure we complete the mission," Den Haag said. 'And those responsibilities have not changed.
"Alex is going to work to support me through all the dynamic phases of the flight and provide me with the extra sets of eyes and the extra pairs of hands that I would need and be able to utilize if there was a pilot sitting next to me. So It's not very different in that respect."
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