What time is SpaceX, NASA Crew-11 launch? How, when to watch on Netflix, Amazon Prime
The next rocket to launch on a mission transporting astronauts to space is coming to a streaming platform near you.
Two major streaming services – Netflix and Amazon Prime – will provide NASA's coverage of a mission known as Crew-11 getting off the ground from Florida. While the U.S. space agency's live cosmic programming has been available on Prime since May, the upcoming mission marks the first launch with astronauts to be broadcast on Netflix – one of the largest streaming platforms in the world.
The four astronauts selected for the Crew-11 mission, a joint venture between NASA and SpaceX, are due to travel to the International Space Station about 250 miles above Earth. At the orbital laboratory, the spacefarers will spend a few months performing scientific research designed to be carried out in microgravity.
But the otherwise routine mission also bears a little more significance: The Crew-11 astronauts will replace the Crew-10 contingent who arrived in mid-March at the space station in a headline-grabbing spaceflight that set the stage to end the infamous Starliner saga.
Here's what to know about the upcoming launch, as well as how to watch a livestream of the SpaceX rocket get off the ground from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Crew-11 launch: Remembering how departing Crew-10 astronauts set stage for 'stuck' Starliner crew to leave
What is Crew-11? What to know about NASA, SpaceX mission
As the name suggests, Crew-11 is NASA and SpaceX's 11th science expedition to the International Space Station.
The missions, most of which last about six months, are contracted under NASA's commercial crew program. The program allows the U.S. space agency to pay SpaceX to launch and transport astronauts and cargo to orbit aboard the company's own vehicles, freeing up NASA to focus on its Artemis lunar program and other spaceflight missions, including future crewed voyages to Mars.
The arrival of the astronauts selected for the Crew-11 mission at the space station will also pave the way for four others to leave. Their Crew-10 predecessors arrived at the ISS in mid-March in a headline-grabbing mission that set the stage for the long-awaited departure of Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams − the NASA astronauts who crewed the ill-fated Boeing Starliner space capsule.
The Crew-10 astronauts – NASA astronauts Nichole Ayers and Anne McClain, Japanese JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov – will depart a few days after their replacements arrive to make a water landing off the coast of California.
What time is the launch of Crew-11 mission from Florida?
The Crew-11 mission is due to get off the ground no earlier than 12:09 p.m. ET Thursday, July 31, from near Cape Canaveral, Florida, according to NASA.
SpaceX uses its Falcon 9 rocket – one of the most active in the world – to launch the crew missions from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. The astronauts themselves ride a Dragon crew capsule – the only U.S. spacecraft capable of carrying astronauts to and from the space station.
The Falcon 9 accelerates to approximately 17,500 miles per hour after liftoff before the Dragon separates in orbit to use its own thrusters to power its way to the space station. NASA and SpaceX mission control will monitor a series of maneuvers guiding Dragon to the Earth-facing port of the station's Harmony module, where it is expected to dock autonomously around 3 a.m. ET Saturday, Aug. 2, according to NASA.
How to watch livestream of Crew-11 launch on Netflix, Prime
Viewers have plenty of ways to follow along with NASA's planned live coverage of both the Falcon 9 launch and Dragon's arrival at the space station.
Launch coverage begins at 8 a.m. ET Thursday, July 31, on NASA+, the U.S. agency's free streaming platform. Content through NASA+ is available to watch on desktop from the agency's official site and YouTube channel, and can be downloaded as a mobile app on smartphones.
NASA has also recently made all of the platform's content available on Amazon Prime and Netflix.
NASA+ made its debut in May on Prime's live channels, available to users even without a subscription.
But viewers will need a Netflix subscription to view NASA content on the popular platform, which boasts a global audience of 700 million people. Viewers should be able to find live NASA+ content in the Netflix interface alongside other popular series.
A post-launch news conference is scheduled to take place at 1:30 p.m. ET and will be available only on NASA's YouTube channel.
NASA+ coverage is scheduled to resume around 1 a.m. ET Saturday, Aug. 2, as the Dragon approaches and docks at the space station, followed by the hatch opening around 5:30 a.m. to allow the crew to enter the station and greet the other astronauts.
Who are the astronauts on the Crew-11 mission?
The Crew-11 mission includes four spacefarers:
Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@gannett.com
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Bloomberg
23 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
The Real Nuclear Moonshot Is Here on Earth
In America in 2025 it's tough to know which we will see first, the Epstein files or a nuclear power plant on the Moon. The Trump administration certainly seems more committed to the latter. Transportation Secretary and acting head of NASA Sean Duffy has reportedly issued a directive aiming for a lunar-ready reactor by 2030. This is certainly one way of pushing more federal funding toward advanced reactor research. It also magnifies, through a fantastical lens, the broader hype around new nuclear power — and the daunting challenge of getting it deployed to meet our more immediate needs for carbon-free power back here at home.
Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
NASA Is Already Prepping To Build Trump A Nuclear Reactor On The Moon
T his week NASA administrator Sean Duffy declared the Trump Administration's intention to land a working nuclear fission reactor on the moon by the end of the decade. 'We're in a race to the moon, in a race with China to the moon,' Duffy said. Planting reactors is more effective than planting a flag in the lunar dust. Duffy referenced the idea of a 'keep-out zone' around a reactor that effectively lays claim to a desirable area, like a craters holding frozen water. Does Duffy's 5-year timetable seem too aggressive? Not particularly, when you consider that NASA and its many contractors have been relying on atomic power for a long time. Since the 1960s, NASA has powered Apollo missions, space probes and Martian landers using radioisotopic batteries that turn the heat emitted by Plutonium-238 and other decaying isotopes into electricity. The Apollo devices are still on the moon with those on Voyager and Pioneer probes were the first manmade objects to leave the solar system. But those devices only put out 100 watts or less. The nuclear fission reactors like what Duffy is talking about are far more complicated. They generate heat by splitting apart Uranium-d238, and would put out 100 kilowatts enough to power a couple dozen homes on Earth. Do we need nuclear on the moon? A decade ago, NASA decided the answer was yes. Nighttime lasts for 14 Earth days in many lunar locations, making solar panels unreliable. And you can't burn oil, coal or gas in a vacuum even if you could get it into orbit. Nasa first validated microreactor tech via the Kilopower project, then in 2022 gave $5 million grants to three consortia to perfect 40 kilowatt designs. The specifications of the Fission Surface Power Project called for a system that weighs just 6 tons, can fit into a cylinder 13 feet in diameter and 20 feet long, and can work for 10 years, self-regulated, with no maintenance or refuelling required. It's a tough remit, says Sebatian Corbisiero, the national technical director for space reactors at the Idaho National Lab, whose team selected the companies for the year-long Nasa study. 'On Earth reactors are not designed to be low mass and small. In space you need as little mass as possible, to fit on a rocket,' he says. Corbisiero does believe a lunar reactor is an important and necessary first step to developing systems that could sustain a Martian colony. As his research group found in 2023, 'Surface nuclear power is required for a sustainable lunar presence.' The three consortia Corbisiero's group selected for the 2022 contract are Lockheed Martin, with BWXT, a team that had already been working for NASA on DRACO, a $500 million demonstration spacecraft powered by a nuclear reactor. Then there's veteran reactor builder Westinghouse, partnered with Aerojet Rocketdyne, which plans to adapt its existing eVinci microreactor. The third is startup X-Energy, teamed with Maxar and Boeing. X-Energy is working on microreactor projects for Dow Chemical and Amazon, but aims to use its own nonstandardized fuel source rather than the standardized HALEU fuel (high assay low enriched uranium) that Nasa directives call for. Corbisiero is diplomatic and won't speculate on which company approach he prefers. The final system is likely to use a Stirling engine to convert fission heat into electricity and feature meltdown-proof liquid sodium circulation. Can we get one on the moon in five years? 'Yes, in my opinion it is doable,' he says. It will depend however on continued development of the rest of the Artemis flight system (the first crewed mission Artemis II is scheduled for early 2026) and whether NASA can get the money. On Earth, microreactors cost billions. According to Duffy, the Trump Administration thinks America can't afford not to plant reactors on the moon as soon as possible. China is planning its Chang'e-8 mission in 2029 to test out methods for building a lunar base with robots and 3-d printers by the mid-2030s. Duffy says both China and the U.S. want to monopolize the best lunar real estate, near the poles, where the sun always shines; 'We have ice there, we have sunlight there. We want to get there first and claim that for America.' More from Forbes Forbes How This Billionaire Family Is Succeeding Despite The Collapse Of The American Shipping Industry By Christopher Helman Forbes Why Ramaco Says It Can Beat Its Government-Backed Rival For Rare Earth Supremacy By Christopher Helman Forbes How An Unassuming Geologist Cracked The Global Fertilizer Cartel By Christopher Helman Forbes Meet The Tiny Startup Building Stargate, OpenAI's $500 Billion Data Center Moonshot By Christopher Helman
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
What to know: SpaceX to launch another Amazon Kuiper mission from Cape Canaveral in Florida
Amazon's Kuiper internet constellation will continue to grow thanks to yet another launch -- again on a SpaceX rocket. The mission is known as KF-02 (Kuiper Falcon 2) and is set to liftoff no earlier than 10:01 a.m. Thursday, August 7, from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. SpaceX has a 27-minute window to make the launch. As the name suggests, it is the second launch of the satellites atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX recently launched a batch of the satellites back on July 16. Amazon Kuiper SpaceX launch from Cape Canaveral Comparable to SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet, the Amazon Kuiper satellite internet service promises to provide internet in "unserved and underserved communities." Overall, this will be the fourth launch of the satellite constellation to date. Kuiper saw its first batch launched April 28 of this year atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. The SpaceX's Falcon 9 will deploy the satellites 289 miles above Earth, and then Amazon's Project Kuiper team will take over from an operations center in Redmond, Washington. From there, the Amazon team will raise the satellites to an altitude of approximately 391 miles. Amazon was founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, who also founded space company, Blue Origin. SpaceX and the Starlink satellites are products of billionaire Elon Musk. Eventually, the Amazon Kuiper satellites will eventually be launched atop Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket as well. Amazon plans to have 3,232 of the first-generation satellites in orbit within the coming years. In contrast, SpaceX has about 8,000 Starlink satellites in orbit. The Project Kuiper satellites are processed for launch at the new $140 million, 100,000-square-foot processing plant at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. When is the next Florida launch? Is there a launch today? Upcoming NASA, SpaceX, ULA rocket launch schedule at Cape Canaveral SpaceX Falcon 9 launch in Florida to see new booster The Falcon 9 first-stage, also known as the booster, launching this mission is seeing its first flight. This is a rare occasion, as SpaceX routinely pushes its fleet of boosters to well beyond 20 flights. Reusability keeps the costs down. There will be no Space Coast sonic booms, as the new booster will land out on the A Shortfall of Gravitas drone ship, which will be waiting in the Atlantic Ocean. A few days following the launch, the new booster will arrive back at Port Canaveral for retrival by SpaceX. Brooke Edwards is a Space Reporter for Florida Today. Contact her at bedwards@ or on X: @brookeofstars. This article originally appeared on Florida Today: What to know: SpaceX launch of Amazon Kuiper mission in Cape Canaveral Solve the daily Crossword
