More details: Visit websiteIn The News:
ULA scrubs attempt of 1st Boeing Starliner mission with humans – Orlando Sentinel
Starliner Crew Flight Test; NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore; Aboard the Astrovan, on the way to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Space Launch Complex 41, on Monday, May 6, 2024. (Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda/ Orlando Sentinel)
⁘We⁘re standing down for today so starting to initiate getting the vehicle and configuration to egress the crew,⁘ said ULA chief launch director Doug Lebo. ⁘The engineering team has evaluated the vehicle is not in a configuration that we can proceed with flight today, so we⁘re going to initiate our scrub and recycle operation.⁘
The problematic valve was located on the Centaur upper stage of the Atlas rocket. Early Tuesday, ULA announced it would not attempt a Tuesday launch, so the earliest opportunity would be Friday, but that too could be pushed if ULA determines it needs to roll the rocket back to its Vehicle Integration Facility from the launch pad.
Billionaire Jared Isaacman, who flew to space once with SpaceX, is already set for launch No. 2 in early summer. The mission calls for new spacesuits introduced this past weekend designed so the crew can survive the plan to suck out all of the air of the spacecraft and allow Isaacman and a crewmate to make the first commercial spacewalk in history.
Flying on the Crew Dragon Resilience again, the mission dubbed Polaris Dawn is the first of up to three flights Isaacman wants to fly, culminating in what is supposed to be the first crewed mission of SpaceX⁘s Starship.
For now, though, it has to use SpaceX⁘s existing rocket options, so he and his three crewmates will launch atop a Falcon 9 from Kennedy Space Center⁘s Launch Complex 39-A. It will mark Isaacman⁘s return after his Inspiration4 mission in 2021.
His crewmates for Polaris Dawn include two SpaceX employees and one of Isaacman⁘s pilot friends. The SpaceX crew are mission specialist and medical officer Anna Menon and mission specialist Sarah Gillis. Isaacman⁘s flight buddy is mission pilot Scott Poteet, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and demonstration pilot who flew with the Air Force Thunderbirds. He acted as mission director for the Inspiration4 flight.
The crew and SpaceX technical leads held a discussion Sunday on X to detail parts of the mission and discuss the new extravehicular activity (EVA) spacesuit the quartet will wear during the planned spacewalk.
⁘We hope to learn an awful lot about our suit and the operation associated with it because it⁘s the first commercial EVA, the first time you don⁘t have government astronauts undertaking such a mission,⁘ Isaacman said. ⁘That⁘s important because if we are going to get to the moon or Mars someday we⁘re going to have to get out of our vehicles, out of the safety of the habitat and explore and build and repair things.⁘
No comments:
Post a Comment