Finally they are gone. The three astronauts and a cosmonaut of the SpaceX Crew-10 mission are on their way to the International Space Station. Liftoff went smooth at. 19:03 one on Friday when a Falcon 9 -rocket lifted the Dragon -Space vessel, named endurance, to space.
Why did SpaceX Crew-10 launch be delayed?
NASA had planned the spacecraft Liftoff for 19:48 on a Wednesday from Launch Complex 39a at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The launch complex has a great story that goes back to the era of the Apollo Moon program in the 1960s.
However, a hydraulic system problem meant NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Astronaut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos Cosmonaut Kirill Peskov had to leave the dragon space. Plans to try again Thursday were scrapped because of the weather forecast and moved to Friday.
Read more: Nasas ‘stranded’ astronauts days away from coming home
Looking at Friday’s launch
NASA livestreamed launch at. 19:03 A Friday, March 14 from Launch Complex 39a.
Crew-10 docks to ISS: How to look
Arrival cover starts at. 21.45 Saturday. Free streaming service NASA Plus emits docking, hatch opening and welcome ceremony. If everything goes smooth, endurance dock with ISS at. 23:30 Saturday, with hatch opening scheduled for 1:05 on Sunday.
Return by ‘Stranded’ astronauts
The Crew-10 has a little more riding on it than a typical herd rotation mission. NASA astronauts Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore became long-term ISS residents after driving to the station on a test mission for Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule. The herd capsule encountered technical problems and was sent back to Earth without the astronauts.
Williams and Wilmore’s ISS remain unexpectedly stretched out for more than eight months. Crew-10’s arrival agents Willams, Wilmore, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos Cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will be able to hand out ISS obligations to the new ones and return to Earth on a SpaceX Dragon sent up in September. This dragon arrived with two open seats to the Starliner crew journey home.
With the launch of Friday, the crew members, including the much-delayed Williams and Wilmore, will leave the space station earlier than Wednesday, March 19, depending on the weather at the splashdown locations off the coast of Florida.
Both Williams and Wilmore have insisted that they do not feel stranded, though this expression has been widely applied to them in news stories and social media.
See this: NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 launch: Mission to return ‘Stranded’ astronauts begin