{"id":108228,"date":"2020-11-09T18:44:05","date_gmt":"2020-11-09T15:44:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/astronauts-arrive-at-launch-site-for-2nd-spacex-crew-flight\/"},"modified":"2020-11-09T18:44:05","modified_gmt":"2020-11-09T15:44:05","slug":"astronauts-arrive-at-launch-site-for-2nd-spacex-crew-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/astronauts-arrive-at-launch-site-for-2nd-spacex-crew-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"#Astronauts arrive at launch site for 2nd SpaceX crew flight"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Astronauts arrive at launch site for 2nd SpaceX crew flight<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. \u2014 Four astronauts arrived at Kennedy Space Center on Sunday for SpaceX\u2019s second crew launch, coming up next weekend.<\/p>\n

For NASA, it marks the long-awaited start of regular crew rotations at the International Space Station, with private companies providing the lifts. There will be double the number of astronauts as the test flight earlier this year, and their mission will last a full six months.<\/p>\n

\u201cMake no mistake: Every flight is a test flight when it comes to space travel<\/a>. But it\u2019s also true that we need to routinely be able to go to the International Space Station,\u201d NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in welcoming the astronauts to Kennedy.<\/p>\n

The crew of three Americans and one Japanese are scheduled to rocket away Saturday night, provided app<\/a>roaching Tropical Storm Eta doesn\u2019t interfere. It will be a speedy trip to the space station, a six-orbit express lasting under nine hours.<\/p>\n

The astronauts have named their Dragon capsule Resilience given all the challenges of 2020: coronavirus and social<\/a> isolation, protests against racial injustice, and a particularly difficult election and campaign season. They have been in quarantine for a week or two and taking safety precautions \u2014 masks and social distancing \u2014 long before that.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a tough year for everybody for a lot of different reasons,\u201d crew commander Mike Hopkins said after flying in from Houston. \u201cWe felt like if the name of our vehicle could give a little hope, a little inspiration, put a smile on people\u2019s face, then that is definitely what we wanted to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

The four will remain in orbit until spring, when their replacements arrive aboard another SpaceX Dragon capsule. The cargo version of the capsule also will keep making regular deliveries of food and supplies.<\/p>\n

SpaceX\u2019s Benji Reed said the company expects to launch seven Dragons over the next 14 months: three for crew and four for cargo.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time there\u2019s a Dragon launch, there will be two Dragons in space,\u201d said Reed, director of crew mission management.<\/p>\n

NASA\u2019s other hired taxi service, meanwhile, Boeing, isn\u2019t expected to fly its first crew until next summer. The company plans a second unpiloted test flight in a couple months; the first one suffered so many software problems that the Starliner capsule failed to reach the space station.<\/p>\n

\"Astronaut<\/p>\n

NASA turned to private companies for space station deliveries \u2014 cargo, then crew \u2014 following the shuttle fleet\u2019s retirement in 2011. U.S. astronauts kept hitching rides on Russian rockets at increasingly steep prices. The last Soyuz ticket cost NASA $90 million.<\/p>\n

SpaceX finally ended NASA\u2019s nearly decade-long launch drought for astronauts last May, successfully delivering a pair of test pilots to the space station from Kennedy for a two-month stay. The returning capsule was scrutinized by SpaceX following its splashdown, resulting in a few changes for this second flight.<\/p>\n

Engineers discovered excessive erosion in the heat shield from the searing reentry temperatures; the company shored up the vulnerable section for the upcoming launch, said SpaceX\u2019s Hans Koenigsmann, a vice president. Improvements also were made to the altitude-measuring system for the parachutes, after the chutes opened a little too low on the first astronaut flight. More recently, the Falcon rocket had two engines replaced because of contamination from a red lacquer used in processing. The engine swaps delayed the flight two weeks.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the biggest surprise from the first SpaceX crew flight was all the private boats full of gawkers who surrounded the capsule in the Gulf of Mexico following splashdown in August. Koenigsmann promises a bigger keep-out zone and more patrols for future returns.<\/p>\n

The second crew has three veteran fliers and one first-timer:<\/p>\n

\u2014 Hopkins, 51, is an Air Force colonel and former space station resident who grew up on a hog and cattle farm in Missouri.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Navy Cmdr. Victor Glover, 44, is the pilot and the lone space rookie; he\u2019s from the Los Angeles area and will be the first African American astronaut to move into the space station for a long stay.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Shannon Walker, 55, a Houston-born-and-raised physicist, also has lived before on the space station; her husband, retired astronaut Andrew Thomas, helped build the outpost.<\/p>\n

\u2014 The Japanese Space Agency\u2019s Soichi Noguchi, 55, another former station resident, will become the first person in decades to launch on three kinds of rocketships; he\u2019s already flown on a U.S. space shuttle and Russian Soyuz.<\/p>\n

They will join two Russians and one American who arrived at the space station last month from Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n

Hopkins and his crew will ride to the launch pad in Teslas \u2014 SpaceX founder Elon Musk\u2019s other company \u2014 in spacesuits color-coordinated with the spacecraft. But beneath all the good looks is \u201clots of amazing capability,\u201d according to Glover.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very sleek capsule. But it\u2019s got the advantage of having great leaps in technology<\/a> since the last time we built spacecraft here in this country,\u201d Walker said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.<\/p>\n

Noguchi, who along with Walker joined the crew just this year, is particularly excited about riding a Dragon. In Japan, the dragon is an esteemed mythical creature \u2014 \u201calmost a ride to the heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s quite a privilege to learn how to train the Dragon actually, how to ride a Dragon,\u201d he said. \u201cSpaceX did pretty good job teaching from scratch to dragon rider in six months.\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Astronauts arrive at launch site for 2nd SpaceX crew flight” CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. \u2014 Four astronauts arrived at Kennedy Space Center on Sunday for SpaceX\u2019s second crew launch, coming up next weekend. For NASA, it marks the long-awaited start of regular crew rotations at the International Space Station, with private companies providing the lifts. There…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":108229,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/11\/astronauts-6.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[79276,73340,39394,6642,71302,70678],"class_list":["post-108228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-11-9-20","tag-astronauts","tag-elon-musk","tag-florida","tag-international-space-station","tag-spacex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}