1 year ago
98 The Crew-5 ngo launches connected Oct. 5, 2022.
NASA TV
SpaceX launched 4 radical to the International Space Station from Florida connected Wednesday, arsenic Elon Musk's institution keeps up a dependable gait of crewed missions.
Known arsenic Crew-5, the ngo for NASA volition bring the radical up to the ISS for a six-month enactment successful orbit. The ngo is SpaceX's 5th operational unit motorboat for NASA to date, and the company's eighth quality spaceflight successful conscionable implicit 2 years.
"That was a creaseless thrust uphill," NASA astronaut and Crew-5 commandant Nicole Mann said aft the spacecraft reached orbit, adding that "you got 3 rookies that are beauteous blessed to beryllium floating successful abstraction close now."
Crew-5 got disconnected the crushed soon aft noon ET, opening an estimated 29-hour travel to dock with the ISS. The ngo brings the fig of astronauts SpaceX has launched to 30, including some authorities and backstage missions, since its archetypal crewed motorboat successful May 2020.
Left to right: Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina, NASA astronaut Josh Cassada, NASA astronaut Nicole Mann, and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata get up of the motorboat of the SpaceX Crew-5 ngo from the Kennedy Space Center successful Florida connected October 5, 2022.
Jim Watson | Afp | Getty Images
SpaceX launched the astronauts successful its Crew Dragon capsule called Endurance, connected apical of a Falcon 9 rocket. Both the rocket and capsule are reusable.
Endurance is flying to abstraction for a 2nd clip – having flown the Crew-3 ngo to and from the ISS successful the past year.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon capsule stands connected Pad-39A successful mentation for a ngo to transportation 4 unit members to the International Space Station from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, successful Cape Canaveral, Florida, October 4, 2022.
Joe Skipper | Reuters
Crew-5 carries 4 astronauts — 2 American, 1 Japanese and 1 Russian: NASA astronauts Mann and Josh Cassada, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina.
NASA made a "seat swap" statement with Roscosmos to alert Kikina, making her some the archetypal Russian cosmonaut to alert with SpaceX and the archetypal to motorboat connected a U.S. spacecraft since 2002.
SpaceX developed its Crew Dragon spacecraft and fine-tuned its Falcon 9 rocket nether NASA's competitory Commercial Crew program, competing against Boeing's Starliner capsule. But Boeing's capsule remains successful development, with costly delays pushing backmost the commencement of operational Starliner flights.
Both of NASA's astronauts flying Wednesday were reassigned from Boeing to SpaceX successful a uncommon move by the abstraction bureau past year.
SpaceX has present won contracts for 14 NASA unit missions, to Boeing's six.
