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NASA and SpaceX aim to launch Crew-8 to the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday night.
The mission is currently being broadcast live on NASA TV, showing astronauts preparing for launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Here’s how to view coverage.
The mission was due to launch last week, but was canceled due to poor weather conditions along the flight route. The main concern for Sunday’s launch is precipitation around Kennedy, but a few hours later, it seems more likely that the flight will go ahead.
SpaceX Crew-8 consists of NASA astronauts Michael Barratt, Matthew Dominick and Jeanette Epps, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin. This is Barratt’s third space mission, while the other three are heading to orbit for the first time.
Epps will be especially happy to finally get into orbit after being assigned to a Soyuz flight in 2017, from which she was subsequently removed. This was followed by a manned Starliner mission in 2020 that also did not take place.
“It’s been a few years, but I was confident it would fly,” Epps saying during a recent press conference. “The way I kept my spirits up was, you know, we continue to train weekly, daily (we train vigorously) for whatever mission we’re assigned, so I’ve been busy for the last few years, still training. “We are still working toward the goal of going to the space station.”
The four crew members will travel on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft and spend about six months living and working aboard the ISS in microgravity conditions about 250 miles above Earth.
Crew-8 is the eighth crew rotation flight of SpaceX’s human space transportation system to the ISS through NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, and its ninth mission with astronauts if the Demo-2 test flight in 2020.
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