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spacex mission

SpaceX will make a second attempt in the coming hours to get NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken into orbit.

On May 27, the Dragon capsule’s flight to the International Space Station (ISS) was postponed because of poor weather at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center.

Forecasters say conditions on May 30 will probably be touch and go again.

It follows the spectacular explosion on May 29 of a rocket prototype at SpaceX’s R&D facility in Texas.

SpaceX has been trialing a new design for a future vehicle it calls Starship. The latest model was destroyed in the blast.

The development work at Boca Chica, close to the Mexican border, is entirely separate from SpaceX’s commercial crew activities with NASA.

Doug Hurley’s and Bob Behnken’s lift-off at Kennedy is scheduled for 15:22 EDT.

There’s huge focus on their mission because it will mark the first time that the US has been able to launch its astronauts to the ISS since the retirement of NASA’s space shuttles in 2011.

It will also be the first occasion that NASA has used a private company to transport one of its crews to orbit.

Image source: NASA

Dragon Capsule: SpaceX Launches First Demo Mission from Kennedy Space Center

Dragon CRS-10: SpaceX Successfully Launches New Mission Carrying Cargo Ship for ISS

However, people were wrong if they thought this attention added to the pressure to get the astronauts off the ground, said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.

“We will launch when we are ready,” he told reporters.

“I’ll tell you, the President and the Vice President were proud of the NASA team and the SpaceX team for making the right call for the right reasons.”

The first launch attempt in the week was scrubbed just 16 minutes before the designated launch time. There had been much electrical activity in the air throughout the day, and controllers concluded it wouldn’t be prudent to proceed with the flight.

At the moment of postponement, Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken were sitting in their Dragon capsule atop its Falcon rocket with the booster fuels being loaded below them.

The frustration was that the countdown was going so smoothly; engineers had seen no technical issues of concern. The vehicles were in perfect shape to begin their ascent.

On May 30, they will follow exactly the same routines. The astronauts will head out to the pad about three hours prior to 15:22 EDT. A SpaceX “close out” team will help them strap into their capsule seats, and then it will be a case of running through the pre-flight checks with controllers.

If the launch goes ahead, Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken have about a 19-hour flight to the ISS. They’ll use that time to try out systems onboard the Dragon capsule, including having a go at manual flying. They’ll also need to get some sleep after what will have been a long day.

The astronauts are expected to stay at the ISS for between one and four months before returning to Earth.

SpaceX, which is run by the tech billionaire Elon Musk, has a $2.6 billion contract with NASA to provide six crew flights to the space station. The first of these is scheduled for the end of August, assuming nothing untoward happens on Doug Hurley’s and Bob Behnken’s demonstration.

Boeing has a similar contract, but it is a year at least behind SpaceX in its development timeline.

SpaceX has announced that two private citizens have paid to be sent around the Moon.

The company’s CEO Elon Musk said the mission is planned for late 2018 and the tourists “have already paid a significant deposit”.

The two unnamed space tourists will fly aboard a spaceship which is set for its first unmanned test flight later this year.

Elon Musk said the co-operation of NASA had made the plan possible.

He said the two passengers “will travel faster and further into the solar system than any before them”.

Elon Musk declined to reveal their identities, only saying that they knew each other and that “it’s nobody from Hollywood”.

Image source Wikimedia

He added: “Like the Apollo astronauts before them, these individuals will travel into space carrying the hopes and dreams of all humankind, driven by the universal human spirit of exploration.

“We expect to conduct health and fitness tests, as well as begin initial training later this year.”

The first mission would be unmanned, and the next one – with crew – was expected in Q2 of 2018, he said.

Elon Musk also said the first passengers “are entering this with their eyes open, knowing that there is some risk here”.

“They’re certainly not naive, and we’ll do everything we can to minimize that risk, but it’s not zero.”

The tourists would make a loop around the Moon, skimming the lunar surface and then going well beyond, the entrepreneur said.

The mission will not involve a lunar landing.

If NASA decided it wanted to be first to take part in a lunar flyby mission, then the agency would have priority, Elon Musk said.

The US has not sent astronauts to the Moon since the early 1970s.

Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic venture proposes to send tourists on short sub-orbital flights in its vehicle SpaceShipTwo; the cost of a seat is listed as $250,000.

However, Virgin Galactic’s space vehicle was destroyed in a crash in 2014 and it remains unclear when the first flights with paying customers will begin.

SpaceX has successfully launched the Dragon CRS-10 (2) mission carrying a cargo ship for the International Space Station (ISS) following the postponement of take-off on February 18 because of technical problems.

Witnesses said the Dragon rocket was only briefly visible before making its way into the clouds.

The launch was made from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The rocket booster successfully landed on the ground nine minutes after taking off.

Image source Flickr

The touchdown is part of SpaceX’s strategy of returning rockets to earth so they can be reused rather than jettisoning them in the ocean after a single launch.

Moments after the rocket landed, the SpaceX Dragon supply ship successfully reached orbit, prompting cheers inside the SpaceX Mission Control room.

The Dragon is now making its way to the ISS, and is expected to arrive on February 22.

On January 14, SpaceX resumed flights by launching a Falcon 9 vehicle from the Vandenberg Air Force Base on the California coast.

It was the first mission by the private rocket company since one of its vehicles exploded on the launch pad in September.

The company founder, Elon Musk, wants SpaceX to be at the forefront of the race involving several companies to deploy satellite-based internet services over the next few years.

SpaceX also has a long queue of customers all waiting for a ride to orbit – including America’s civil space agency (NASA), the US military and multiple outfits in the commercial sector.