On Wednesday, a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying four astronauts launched into orbit atop a Falcon 9 rocket, marking the start of the company’s fifth crewed mission to orbit.
One whole day (Wednesday) will be spent in the spacecraft by the three NASA astronauts and one European astronaut onboard, manoeuvring closer to the International Space Station (ISS), where it’ll dock late Thursday by kicking off a six-month science and research mission.
The astronauts will spend the next day strapped inside their spacecraft as it maneuvers through orbit and prepares to link up with the ISS, which orbits more than 200 miles above Earth’s surface.
On Thursday at 7:10 pm ET, Docking is scheduled. This mission is the fourth collaboration between SpaceX and NASA and will be called as Crew-3. This partnership is to make routine trips to the ISS which will keep the 21-year-old space station adequately staffed. Since it’s Space Shuttle program retired in 2021, this is something NASA wanted to have more control on. This will also make Russia one and only country with the ability to provide ISS transportation.
However, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon is nothing like a space shuttle. NASA is just another customer for these missions, as the company still owns and operates the vehicle.
In fact, NASA’s Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, and Kayla Barron, as well as Matthias Maurer of the European Space Agency, will be the first professional astronauts to board a Crew Dragon since SpaceX’s Inspiration4 all-civilian tourist mission. That mission took four people, none of whom were trained astronauts, on a three-day space journey that orbited higher than any spacecraft has since the 1970s moon missions.
The Inspiration mission, according to NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager, was a “gift” because it brought issues with a key component on the Crew Dragon spacecraft — the toilet — to light, allowing the problem to be fixed for future NASA missions.
“The Inspiration4 crew were alerted to an issue with the onboard toilet’s fan, which is used to create suction that is necessary when going to the bathroom in microgravity. After the spacecraft returned home, SpaceX disassembled the capsule and found “contamination.”
