CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Oct 5 (Reuters) – Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX was due to launch the next long-duration crew of the International Space Station into orbit on Wednesday, with a Russian cosmonaut hitchhiking with two Americans and a Japanese. astronaut as part of the mission.
SpaceX’s launch vehicle, which consists of a Falcon 9 rocket topped with a Crew Dragon capsule called Endurance, prepared for liftoff at noon EDT (1600 GMT) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The four-member crew is due to arrive at the International Space Station (ISS) about 29 hours later Thursday evening to begin a 150-day science mission aboard the orbiting laboratory about 250 miles (420 km) above Earth .
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The mission, designated Crew-5, is the fifth ISS crew that NASA has flown aboard a SpaceX vehicle since the private rocket company founded by Tesla owner Musk began sending American astronauts in May 2020.
The latest team is led by Nicole Aunapu Mann, a veteran fighter pilot who made spaceflight history as the first indigenous woman NASA sends into orbit and the first woman to occupy the commander’s seat of a Dragon of the SpaceX crew.
The Crew-5 mission is also notable for the inclusion of 38-year-old Anna Kikina, the lone female cosmonaut on active duty with the Russian space agency Roscosmos, and the only Russian to have yet flown aboard a spacecraft American amid global tensions over the war in Ukraine. . The last cosmonaut to ride a US rocket into orbit was in 2002 on a NASA space shuttle.
FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE
Kikina is essentially trading places with a NASA astronaut who took his seat aboard a Russian Soyuz flight to the ISS last month under a new ride-sharing agreement signed by NASA and Roscosmos in July .
Kikina will be only the fifth Russian woman sent into space in a historically male-dominated cosmonaut corps.
“In general, for me, I don’t care,” he said in a recent interview, ignoring the novelty of his Roscosmos carving. “But I realize the responsibility because I represent the people of my country.”
Commander Mann, 45, a US Marine Corps colonel and fighter pilot who flew combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, has a master’s degree in engineering specializing in fluid mechanics.
As a registered member of the Wailacki Indian Tribes of the Round Valley, Mann will become the first Native American woman to fly in space. The only other Native American launched into orbit was John Herrington, who flew on a launch mission in 2002.
The pilot designated for Wednesday’s launch is Mann’s fellow NASA astronaut and fellow spaceflight novice Josh Cassada, 49, a U.S. Navy aviator and test pilot with a PhD in particle physics high energy
Rounding out the crew for Japan’s JAXA space agency is veteran astronaut Koichi Wakata, 59, a robotics expert on his fifth trip to space.
Crew-5 will be met by seven existing ISS occupants – Crew-4 consisting of three Americans and an Italian astronaut – as well as two Russians and the NASA astronaut who flew with them into orbit on a Soyuz flight.
The newcomers are tasked with carrying out more than 200 experiments, many of them focused on medical research ranging from 3D “bioprinting” of human tissue to studying bacteria grown in microgravity.
The ISS, the length of a football field and the largest man-made object in space, has been continuously occupied since November 2000, operated by a US-Russia-led consortium that includes Canada, Japan and 11 European countries.
The outpost was born in part to improve relations between Washington and Moscow after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War rivalries that spurred the original US-Soviet space race.
But NASA-Roscosmos cooperation has been tested like never before since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, prompting the Biden administration to impose sweeping sanctions against Moscow.
During a press conference with NASA and SpaceX on Monday, a senior Roscosmos official, Sergei Krikalev, said his agency has Moscow’s approval to continue with the ISS until 2024 and hopes to get “permission” from Kremlin to further extend the partnership, until Russia builds. a new space station.
NASA hopes to keep the ISS operational with its existing partners until about 2030.
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Report from Joe Skipper in Cape Canaveral; Additional writing and reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Joey Roulette in Washington. Lincoln Feast Edition
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