SpaceX Crew-9 Nears Launch During Station Upkeep Duties
Two SpaceX Crew-9 crewmates are counting down to a Saturday launch, weather permitting, and beginning a five-month mission aboard the International Space Station. Meanwhile, crew departure preparations and lab maintenance duties were ongoing for the Expedition 72 orbital residents on Thursday.
Commander Nick Hague of NASA and Mission Specialist Aleksandr Gorbunov of Roscosmos are at Kennedy Space Center in Florida preparing for their liftoff aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft targeted for no earlier than 1:17 p.m. EDT on Saturday, as the impacts from Hurricane Helene to the Florida peninsula are better understood. The duo will ride Dragon in low Earth orbit for a day before docking to the Harmony module's forward port at 5:30 p.m. on Sunday. Hague and Gorbunov will open the hatch about an hour-and-a-half later and join Expedition 72 before returning to Earth in February. NASA's launch and docking coverage begins at 9:10 a.m. Saturday and will stream on NASA+ and the agency's website. Learn how to stream NASA content through a variety of platforms, including social media.
See Hurricane Helene in this video from the space station.
Soon after Crew-9 arrives, three astronauts and a cosmonaut will end their six-and-a-half-month mission and depart the space station. NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Mike Barratt, and Jeanette Epps with Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin will return to Earth aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft for a splashdown off the coast of Florida. The SpaceX Crew-8 quartet practiced Dragon departure and deorbit techniques on a computer Thursday getting ready for next month's return to Earth.
Space station Commander Suni Williams and Flight Engineer Butch Wilmore, who are due to fly back home with Crew-9 in February, reviewed Dragon pressure suit characteristics. Williams also transferred cargo in and out of the Cygnus cargo craft. Afterward, Epps and Barratt helped Williams collect her blood samples for processing, stowage, and later analysis. Wilmore joined Dominick and swapped components on the orbital outpost's toilet, also called the waste and hygiene compartment, located in the Tranquility module. Grebenkin tried on the Roscosmos-designed lower body negative pressure suit that may help crews adjust quicker upon return to Earth's gravity.
NASA astronaut Don Pettit, who is on his fourth spaceflight, spent Thursday cleaning sampling hardware inside the Electrostatic Levitation Furnace, a research device that explores the thermophysical properties of materials heated to extreme temperatures. Cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Nikolai Chub worked throughout the day servicing electronics and life support systems in the orbiting lab's Roscosmos segment.
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