SpaceX Launch of Six Astronauts to the ISS is Scrubbed

SpaceX is livestreaming coverage of its latest launch tonight. SpaceX and NASA were "preparing to launch a fresh crew to the International Space Station," reports CNN, "continuing the public-private effort to keep the orbiting laboratory fully staffed and return astronaut launches to U.S. soil For this mission a reusable Falcon 9 rocket will eventually propel a Crew Dragon capsule into space - carrying six astronauts "from all over the world - two NASA astronauts, a Russian cosmonaut and an astronaut from the United Arab Emirates... to take over operations from the SpaceX Crew-5 astronauts who arrived at the space station in October 2022."They're expected to spend up to six months on board the orbiting laboratory, carrying out science experiments and maintaining the two-decade-old station.... During their stint in space, the Crew-6 astronauts will oversee more than 200 science-oriented projects, including researching how some substances burn in the microgravity environment and investigating microbial samples that will be collected from the exterior of the ISS. They will play host to two other key missions that will stop by the ISS during their stay. The first is the Boeing Crew Flight Test, which will mark the first astronaut mission under a Boeing-NASA partnership. Slated for April, the flight will carry NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams to the space station, marking the last phase of a testing and demonstration program Boeing needs to carry out to certify its Starliner spacecraft for routine astronaut missions. Then, in May, a group of four astronauts will arrive on a mission called AX-2 - a privately funded tourism mission to the space station. That mission, which will be carried out by a separate SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, will include former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, now a private astronaut with the Texas-based space tourism company Axiom, which brokered and organized the mission. It will also include three paying customers, similar to the AX-1 mission that visited the ISS last year. "It's another paradigm shift," mission commander Stephen Bowen said in January. "Those two events - huge events - in spaceflight happening during our increment, on top of all the other work we get to do, I don't think we're going to fully be able to absorb it until after the fact." Roughly 25 hours after the launch the crew capsule willdock with the space station. This will be SpaceX's seventh astronaut-carrying flight for NASA since 2020.

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