Two days later rare last second startup abortA Russian Soyuz spacecraft launched Saturday to fly to the International Space Station, carrying two short-term crew members and a NASA astronaut who will be on a six-month tour of duty.
Soyuz MS-25/71S commander Oleg Novitskiy, Belarusian guest cosmonaut Marina Vasilevskaya and NASA veteran Tracy Dyson roared away from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 8:36 a.m. EDT (5:36 p.m. local time) and entered orbit eight minutes and 45 seconds later.
The launch was originally scheduled for last Thursday, but the countdown to launch was canceled within 20 seconds after computers detected low voltage readings in the Soyuz 2.1a rocket’s first stage electrical system.
This was the first such interception of a Soyuz rocket, and it took Russian engineers a day to review telemetry, locate the problem, and replace the suspect batteries. Subsequent tests showed that all systems were ready for a second launch attempt on Saturday.
As the countdown continues for Soyuz’s afternoon launch in Kazakhstan, a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Thursday arrived at the space station and moved to dock at 7:19 a.m. local time, bringing with it a 6,200-pound cargo ship. brought the burden. science equipment, spare parts and crew supplies to the laboratory complex, including fresh food and coffee kits.
Soyuz is expected to arrive at the space station on Monday and depart to dock at a port on the station’s Earth-facing Prichal module at 11:09 local time.
Station commander Oleg Kononenko and cosmonauts will be present to welcome them on board. Nikolai Chub Alexander Grebenkin and NASA astronauts Loral O’Hara, Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps.
Vasilevskaya, an accomplished ballroom dancer and flight attendant for Belavia Airlines, is the first citizen of Belarus, a staunch ally of Russia, to fly into space since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
She was selected as a “spaceflight participant” in a nationwide competition and will conduct research for scientists in Belarus as part of a program known as Belarusian Women in Space.
Dyson is making his third space flight and his second with Soyuz. Despite the political tension between the United States and Russia, the crew seems to get along well with each other.
“It was actually a real pleasure to work with Marina,” Dyson said. “He’s got a great attitude, and that comes in handy when you’re trying to get through (emergency training) procedures in terrible conditions with emergency masks on your face. He’s been a real pleasure to work with.”
Kononenko, Chub and O’Hara were launched to the station aboard the Soyuz MS-24/70S spacecraft last September 15. Dominick, Barratt, Epps and Grebenkin launched aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon ferry ship on March 3. Known as Crew 8, these aircraft replaced four other Crew Dragon aircraft (Crew 7), which returned to Earth on 12 March after a brief handover.
Novitskiy and Vasilevskaya plan to spend 12 days on the space station. O’Hara will replace Dyson on the journey home, and the trio will return to Earth on April 6 aboard the Soyuz MS-24/70S spacecraft, which carried O’Hara, Kononenko and Chub into orbit last September.
Kononenko and Chub are in the middle of a planned year-long stay at the station. If all goes well, they will return to Earth with Dyson next September using the Soyuz MS-25/71S ferry delivered by the Novitskiy crew.
With O’Hara’s return, five of the station’s seven full-time crew members will have been relocated, completing the latest series of crew rotations.
Dyson first flew aboard space shuttle Endeavor for a 13-day visit to the space station in 2007. Three years later, he boarded the Soyuz spacecraft as a long-term station crew member and spent 176 days at the station from the end of April. September 2010.
During this flight, a now-famous photograph of Dyson captured his view of the blue-white Earth suspended in the darkness of space, seen through the laboratory’s multi-window Cupola chamber.
In an interview with CBS News, he said he now knows what to expect and “this time I’m just going to see how I can help others.”
“One of the beauties of living aboard is being part of a crew and a team and helping each other,” he said. “So if I have some free time and the rest of my friends are working, then I’ll definitely try to help out as much as I can. But if we’re all having some free time, I’m really looking forward to the view out the window.”
“I have such a fond memory (of the experience), and this dome shot definitely captures that, of watching the Earth. And it never gets old.”
The training required to get there is another matter, he said.
“This is the hardest part of what we do, the training that requires us to be away from home for long periods of time,” he said. “When I did this on my first two flights, it wasn’t so bad because it was just me in the house. I had a dog that others were willing to take care of. My husband was stationed on a ship.”
“But now it’s a little different and I have a lot of support from my family, who have reminded me over and over that I’m doing this for them as much as I do it for myself.”
It will be a very busy six months in space.
Boeing’s Starliner ferry ship, a NASA-sponsored alternative to SpaceX’s already proven Crew Dragon, is expected to make its first piloted test flight in early May, carrying NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams to the space station on a test flight.
If the flight goes well, the Starliner will be certified for use on future ISS crew rotation missions, providing NASA with redundancy in ferrying astronauts to and from the space station in rotation with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.
“Today, all of our Crew Dragons are launching on SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets,” said Dana Weigel, space station Program Manager. “For example, if there was a problem in F9 and we had to stop for a while… if we had another vehicle, we could continue flying.”
This would help ensure that one or more American astronauts are on the space station at all times.
“That’s why having that ongoing capability is so important to us when we talk about having multiple providers,” Weigel said.
In June, NASA plans three spacewalks, or EVAs, to carry out a variety of missions, including preparations for the addition of a final set of solar panel blankets.
Astronauts have not yet been assigned to the trips, but Dyson is a former spacewalker and his experience may prompt NASA to send him out again.
“We have planned three EVAs for our augmentation, and I am one of the spacewalkers trained to do these EVAs,” he said. “We’ll see how it all works, who goes out and who stays in and gets them ready.”
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