Astronauts launch to the space station after sidelined by Boeing's troubled Starliner
The U.S.-Japanese-Russian crew of four rocketed from NASA's Kennedy Space Center. They'll replace colleagues who launched to the space station in March as fill-ins for NASA's two stuck astronauts.
Their SpaceX capsule should reach the orbiting lab this weekend and stay for at least six months.
Zena Cardman, a biologist and polar explorer who should have launched last year, was yanked along with another NASA crewmate to make room for Starliner's star-crossed test pilots.
The botched Starliner demo forced Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to switch to SpaceX to get back from the space station more than nine months after departing on what should have been a weeklong trip. Ensuring their safe return 'meant stepping aside,' Cardman said before her launch.
'Every astronaut wants to be in space. None of us want to stay on the ground, but it's not about me,' said Cardman, the flight commander. Even after launch, 'things can change at the last minute, so I'll count myself very fortunate when the hatch opens' to the space station.
NASA's Mike Fincke — Cardman's co-pilot — was the backup for Wilmore and Williams on Starliner, making those three still the only ones certified to fly it. Fincke and Japan's Kimiya Yui, former military officers with previous spaceflight experience, were training for Starliner's second astronaut mission. With Starliner grounded until 2026, NASA switched the two to the latest SpaceX flight.
Rounding out the crew is Russia's Oleg Platonov. The former fighter pilot was pulled a few years ago from the Russian Soyuz flight lineup because of an undisclosed health issue that he said has since been resolved.
On hand for the first launch attempt on Thursday, NASA's new acting administrator, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, met with Roscosmos director general Dmitry Bakanov, an invited guest. The two discussed future collaboration, then left town after thick clouds forced a last-minute delay.
'What we learn on these missions is what's going to get us to the moon and then from the moon to Mars, which is I think the direction that NASA has to be,' Duffy said in a NASA interview. 'There's critical real estate on the moon. We want to claim that real estate for ourselves and our partners.'
To save money in light of tight budgets, NASA is looking to increase its space station stays from six months to eight months, a move already adopted by Russia's space agency. SpaceX is close to certifying its Dragon capsules for longer flights, which means the newly launched crew could be up there until April.
NASA is also considering smaller crews — three astronauts launching on SpaceX instead of the typical four — to cut costs.
As for Starliner, NASA is leaning toward launching the next one with cargo before flying another crew.
Engineers are still investigating the thruster failures and helium leaks that bedeviled Starliner following liftoff. Time is running out as NASA looks to abandon the aging space station by 2030. An air leak on the Russian side of the station remains unresolved after years of patching.
'I am not in the least worried' about the leak, which is localized, Platonov said earlier this month.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Post
17 minutes ago
- New York Post
NASA's Curiosity rover captured images of ‘coral' rock on Mars that signify water existed on the planet
There might've been life on Mars after all. Although it resembles a coral typically found at the bottom of the ocean, it was a piece of rock that a NASA spacecraft — Curiosity rover — recently discovered on Mars that was supposedly formed a billion years ago. 3 The NASA spacecraft — Curiosity rover — has captured images that indicated life has existed on Mars. Nasa Advertisement The small, approximately 1-inch-wide (2.5 centimeters) light colored, wind-eroded rock, as described by Live Science, was found in the Gale Crater, which is a large impact basin on Mars. A colorless image taken by a telescopic camera captured the familiar-looking object. Although this discovery is an exciting one — it isn't the first of its kind to be found. 3 The black and white images the telescopic camera, also known as the Curiosity's Remote Micro Imager, has captured. NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/CNRS/IRAP/IAS/LPG Advertisement That same camera, also known as the Curiosity's Remote Micro Imager, has reportedly captured similar-looking objects in the past, signifying that the planet had a watery past. This is because these objects formed 'billions of years ago when liquid water still existed on the Red Planet. Water carried dissolved minerals into rock cracks and later dried, leaving the hardened minerals behind,' as explained by NASA in a recent statement. 'This common process, seen extensively on Earth, has produced fantastic shapes on Mars, including a flower-shaped rock,' the statement continued. 3 The coral-like rock indicates that Mars had a watery past because 'Water carried dissolved minerals into rock cracks and later dried, leaving the hardened minerals behind,' NASA said. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Advertisement These discoveries give hope that there might've been life on Mars after all. NASA's Curiosity has been busy this summer. Back in June, it captured images of a geological structure — which have been nicknamed 'spiderwebs' due to their insect-like pattern of ridges. Similarly to the coral rock, these 'spiderwebs' also indicate that Mars once had water on it that hardered. 'The images and data being collected are already raising new questions about how the Martian surface was changing billions of years ago,' NASA said in a previous statement. Advertisement 'The Red Planet once had rivers, lakes, and possibly an ocean. Although scientists aren't sure why, its water eventually dried up and the planet transformed into the chilly desert it is today.' 'Remarkably, the boxwork patterns show that even in the midst of this drying, water was still present underground, creating changes seen today,' NASA said. 'Eons of sandblasting by Martian wind wore away the rock but not the minerals, revealing networks of resistant ridges within.'
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Astronomer Says Unidentified Object Could Be Alien Spacecraft: ‘We've Never Seen Such a Thing'
The plot of the movie Independence Day could soon become reality—as early as this November. According to Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, a 20-kilometer-wide unidentified space object exhibits some alien-like attributes. Even further, a paper co-authored by Loeb last month concluded that if the object were an alien vessel with 'malign' intentions, then the consequences could be 'dire for humanity.' Loeb and his colleagues at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have written two papers about the object, which was first detected by a NASA-funded telescope in Chile on July 1. On Thursday morning, Loeb joined CNN This Morning to discuss what NASA has labelled 3I/ATLAS. The agency has identified the object as an 'interstellar comet' on its website and said that it 'poses no threat to Earth,' but Loeb cautioned against dismissing some of the object's extraordinary characteristics. 'The brightness of the object implies a diameter of 20 kilometers. There's not enough rocky material in interstellar space to deliver such a giant object,' Loeb said. 'It takes 10,000 years for that much mass to arrive to the inner part of the solar system.' Another factor that the scientist pointed to that distinguishes 3I/Atlas from other interstellar objects (of which only two others have ever been detected) is its trajectory through the solar system. 'The trajectory of this object is very finely tuned. It lies in the plane of the orbits of the planets around the sun, to within five degrees. The chances of that to happen is one in 500.' He went on to say that the chances of the object's path past Jupiter, Mars, and Venus being random were in the range of one in 20,000. Most remarkably, Loeb said that the glow emanating from the object is not befitting that of a comet. 'Usually, for comets you see a trailing tail behind the object. Here, the glow from behind the Hubble Space Telescope image is actually in front of the object.' 'We've never seen such a thing!' Loeb said. The Harvard astronomer isn't the only one who thinks the object is worth keeping an eye on. Last week, Republican Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna wrote NASA Administrator Sean Duffy to suggest that he investigate the nature of 3I/ATLAS using the agency's Juno spacecraft. Juno is currently orbiting Jupiter, the planet that 3I/ATLAS will come closest to. Loeb calculated in a paper published last week that adding extra fuel to the spacecraft would allow Juno to execute a 'fly-by' and study the nature of the object more closely than any Earth-bound telescope. It's unclear if Luna's request will go anywhere, but Loeb suggested on CNN that such a maneuver would help collect data that can help answer the million-dollar question: Are there other life forms out there? 'Why should we assume that we are the only one in our cosmic neighborhood?' he asked, as he advocated for further study of the object. 'We should just check by looking at data.' Solve the daily Crossword
UPI
an hour ago
- UPI
James Webb Space Telescope discovers evidence of a new planet
Peering deep into the heart of our Milky Way galaxy, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals a rich tapestry of more than half a million stars. Scientists announced Thursday evidence of a new planet. NASA via Hubble Space Telescope Aug. 7 (UPI) -- NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has discovered evidence of a giant planet orbiting a star in the solar system closest to Earth, the administration announced Thursday. The Alpha Centauri triple star system, four light-years from Earth, has long been at the center of scientists' search for life on other planets. This discovery was an important step forward in that search, they said. "While there are three confirmed plants orbiting Proxima Centauri, the presence of other worlds surrounding Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B has proved challenging to confirm," a release from NASA said. Alpha Centauri A, Alpha Centauri B and the faint red dwarf star Proxima Centauri comprise the bigger Alpha Centauri, which is visible in the far southern sky. The discovery announced Thursday provides the strongest evidence yet of a gas giant orbiting Alpha Centauri A, and has been accepted for publication by the Astrophysical Journal Letters. "If confirmed, the planet would be the closest to Earth that orbits the habitable zone of a Sun-like star," the NASA release continued. "However, because the planet candidate is a gas giant, scientists say it would not support life as we know it." The James Webb Space Telescope was designed to find the most distant galaxies in the universe, but the operations had to customize the device's "observation sequence" to search for the gas giant.
