SpaceX Launches Crew After NASA, Russia Space Chief Meeting
A Falcon 9 rocket topped with the crew's Dragon capsule lifted off at 11:44 a.m. local time from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carrying NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency 's Kimiya Yui and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov.
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On Thursday, McClain took to social media again to share one of the last photos she'll snap aboard the space station: an image of the Northern Lights dancing just above the curve of the Earth as seen from the station's cupola. "As we get close to leaving the International Space Station, I find myself wanting to savor every moment and every view," McClain wrote. "None of us are guaranteed to get to do this again, and every minute spent in space is a special one." Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said in a Friday news conference that the Crew-11 launch was initially delayed from Thursday due to inopportune weather but went off without issue, shortly before the Florida weather almost necessitated another delay. The flight is the 12th human space flight and 11th space station crew change to come out of NASA's commercial crew program, in which the space agency partners with corporations in order to make the staffing of the space lab safer and more reliable and cost efficient. "We really got very lucky today, I would say," Stich said. "I was just looking at a shot on my phone, a view from Falcon 9 looking down, and you can see the launch pad was kind of in a little, it was almost like a horseshoe of clouds. The launch pad was in the center of that horseshoe." Sarah Walker, director of Dragon Mission Management for SpaceX, added that while it was disappointing to scrub Thursday's launch with less than a minute to take off, safety is always the number one priority. "Today was a better day to fly, although, just barely," Walker said. "I want to say that that horseshoe of clouds closed within a couple of minutes of T-Zero." 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"The goal of this study is to really understand how the disorienting effects of microgravity impact piloting and landing, and then we'll take that feedback and we'll put that into our planning for tools and aids for the crew," Weigel said. The Artemis program seeks to return American astronauts to the moon for the first time since the Apollo missions of the 1960s and early '70s, and McClain was among those in the running for one of the program's missions prior to her naming to Crew-10. The 46-year-old now has two spaceflights under her belt totaling more than 340 days and counting, making her an attractive option for future Artemis missions. Cardman and the rest of Crew-11's mission is months longer than Crew-10's stay, and they will be among a handful of people to be aboard the station in November as NASA and its commercial and international partners celebrate 25 years of continual human occupancy. Weigel thanked all of those who have made reaching the notable milestone possible, and shared that the agency is working through a variety of ideas to commemorate the "amazing accomplishment" in the months to come. "We have no shortage of ideas for what everyone would like to do to celebrate," Weigel said with a smile. Solve the daily Crossword
