SpaceX Crew-9 launch to bring back Sunita Williams: NASA recalls ‘very unusual problem’ with Dragon spacecraft peppermint

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on Friday reported a “very unusual problem” that the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft encountered just before the launch of Crew 9 to the International Space Station.

The US space agency also shared an update on the “critical” SpaceX Crew-9 mission, which was earlier postponed from September 26 to September 28 in view of “any potential hurricane activity” due to Tropical Storm Helen.

Will Hurricane Helen cause further delays to the Crew-9 mission? “Weather officials with @SLDelta45 have predicted 55% favorable weather conditions for launch, scheduled for September 28 at 1:17 pm ET,” NASA Commercial Crew posted on Twitter on Saturday.

“Cumulus cloud rules, flight through precipitation, and surface electric field rules are the primary meteorological concerns,” NASA said.

SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket are now back on the pad and cargo loading will begin soon. “Both returned to the hangar on Wednesday to avoid Hurricane Helene,” NASA said.

“We’re vertical on the pad, and the next big activity will be loading cargo here this afternoon and then preparing for flight,” Steve Stich, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager, said during a press briefing.

‘Very unusual problem’

Steve Stitch talked about a “very unusual problem” that the team had previously encountered. He said, “…Merlin engines produce soot as a by-product. and at [launch] Pad 40, that soot goes out and goes out to the east for water, and the daytime wind blows that soot back into the Dragon spacecraft…so we took the spacecraft back in…”

Later, an official attending the press conference from SpaceX headquarters said, “As Steve talked about, we had kind of a unique situation where the winds were pretty far out of the east and blew some soot back onto the Dragon vehicle . We looked at it on the Dragon vehicle, we cleaned it up, we went ahead and repainted some areas, especially on the radiator. It is important that the radiators dissipate heat properly in the space, so we had to apply some paint…”

‘Big change’ in Crew 9 mission

“We have made a major change in the mission,” NASA said in a press conference on Friday. He was referring to the reduction in the number of crew members of the SpaceX mission.

The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft is launching two astronauts instead of four as initially planned. That’s because NASA has decided to cut two more crew members — its original commanders Jenna Cardman and Stephanie Wilson — from the flight to make room for two more astronauts, who will launch aboard a Boeing Starliner capsule on Sept. 7. Have been “stranded” on the ISS since without returning to Earth. ,

Astronauts Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson gave up their seats so their colleagues could return to Earth. “We’re going to find places for them to fly,” Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space missions, said of Cardman and Wilson. He added, “We really appreciate how difficult it is to abandon a mission and wait a while.”

Crew-9 launch: NASA shares timeline

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 two-man crew prepares for its mission to launch to the International Space Station from Space Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

NASA astronaut Nick Hague, commander, and Roscosmos astronaut Alexander Gorbunov, launch aboard SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket around 1:17 p.m. EDT (10:47 p.m. IST) on Saturday, Sept. 28 do.

The spacecraft is targeted to dock with the ISS on Sunday, September 29 at approximately 5:30 p.m.