Three American astronauts and a German took to the skies on Wednesday evening for a six-month orbit mission to the International Space Station (ISS), a multi-delayed take-off that was originally scheduled to take place ten days ago.
They must replace the crew who have just left the ISS returned to Earth overnight from Monday to Tuesday.
They were launched from Florida by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Wednesday evening at 9:03 p.m. Their Dragon capsule must then dock at the station on Thursday at 7:10 p.m.
Their takeoff was greeted by loud applause in SpaceX’s control room.
NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Kayla Barron and Tom Marshburn, along with European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer, have been waiting in quarantine for days at the Kennedy Space Center.
They were initially due to leave at the end of October but the takeoff was delayed several times, in particular because of the weather, then of a “minor health problem” with one of the astronauts – on which the NASA did not provide more information. details.
The space agency therefore decided to bring the crew of Crew-2 back to Earth before taking off Crew-3. The handover period between the two crews, which normally takes place in zero gravity for a few days, was therefore unable to take place.
The mission is called Crew-3 because it is the third operational to the ISS provided by SpaceX on behalf of NASA. But this is actually the fifth time that Elon Musk’s company has launched humans into orbit: before Crew-1 and Crew-2, a test mission (Demo-2) had sent two astronauts to the ISS. . And in September, SpaceX also launched four tourists for three days in space, independently of NASA.
Reception of tourists
The crew of Crew-3 boarded a brand new Dragon capsule on Wednesday, the copy of which was named Endurance.
For American Tom Marshburn, this will be the third time in space. He already flew aboard a space shuttle in 2009, then a Soyuz rocket in 2012-2013.
The other three astronauts, however, will make the trip for the first time.
They will be greeted by the American Mark Vande Hei, who stayed up there and who celebrated his birthday on Wednesday, alone in the American segment of the station. Two Russian cosmonauts are also on board.
The mission will include many experiences. One of them aims to observe the effects of diet on the intestinal flora and the immune system of astronauts, their defenses often being weakened by a prolonged stay in space. They will thus have the opportunity to consume a larger selection of freeze-dried fruits and vegetables as well as barramundi, a fish.
Crew-3 astronauts will also carry out spacewalks, in particular to continue installing new solar panels on the ISS.
And they will host two tourist missions: Japanese people brought in by a Russian Soyuz spacecraft at the end of the year, then in February 2022 passengers from the Ax-1 mission, organized by the company Axiom Space in partnership with SpaceX.