A SpaceX mission must take off on Saturday with two passengers on board instead of the four initially planned, in order to leave two free seats on return for American astronauts stuck for several months in the International Space Station, due to failures on a Boeing vessel .
Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to take place at 1:17 p.m. local time (EDT) from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launch must be carried out from a new launch pad, used for the first time for a manned mission.
On board will be NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexandre Gorbounov.
When they return, scheduled for February, they will take with them the two space veterans Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. They took off at the beginning of June aboard a new spacecraft developed by Boeing, Starliner, for which it was the first crewed test flight to the Space Station (ISS).
The spacecraft was initially scheduled to return them to Earth eight days later, but problems detected with its propulsion system led NASA to question its reliability.
After long weeks of tests, the space agency finally brought back the Boeing capsule empty, and decided to bring back the two castaways with the SpaceX mission, called Crew-9.
“We know that this launch is a bit unique, with only two passengers,” admitted Jim Free, associate administrator at NASA, during a press conference on Friday. “I want to thank SpaceX for their support and flexibility.”
Billionaire Elon Musk’s company is carrying out this regular rotation mission for the ISS crew, the duration of which is, like all the others, scheduled for around six months.
However, the takeoff of Crew-9 was delayed from mid-August to the end of September in order to give NASA teams more time to make a decision regarding the Boeing spacecraft.
The launch then had to be postponed again by a few days because of Hurricane Helene which hit Florida this week.
SpaceX’s Dragon ship is scheduled to dock with the ISS on Sunday around 9:30 p.m. GMT.
After a handover period with the four members of Crew-8, they will return to Earth aboard another SpaceX ship.
In total, Nick Hague and Alexandre Gorbounov will spend around five months on the ISS. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams stayed there for approximately eight months.
Some 200 scientific experiments are planned during their stay.