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| Image: SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket |
The SpaceX Crew-5 mission, which was scheduled to launch at the beginning of September, won't take off until September 29 at the earliest, NASA said. The postponement will allow the Elon Musk company more time to install a new heat shield, parachutes, and pod panels on the reusable capsule that transports the astronauts, as well as more time to repair or replace the damaged hardware.
The US space agency stated in a statement that "a launch at the end of September will allow SpaceX to finish hardware preparation and mission teams will continue to assess the launch date depending on the visiting spacecraft schedule to the space station." "Crew-5 will now launch after the scheduled Soyuz undocking and launch window of September 16–30."
When it was transported from SpaceX's manufacturing in Hawthorne, California, to its test site in McGregor, Texas, the Falcon 9 rocket was damaged. Only a small portion of the rockets interstage was destroyed, according to X-ray examinations, and load and shock studies, and the remainder of the vehicle remain unharmed.
The choice was made shortly after retired astronaut Sandra Magnus, a member of NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, suggested that SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon capsules for human transportation only be reused up to five times each. The Falcon 9 is a two-stage rocket, the first stage of which, like the Dragon spacecraft, can be recovered and upgraded to be used again.
"As both NASA and SpaceX have gained experience with working together and SpaceX has accumulated a flight history on both the Falcon 9 booster and Dragon capsule, NASA has been thinking carefully about reuse and their certification process for reuse," she said during a panel meeting this week, SpaceNews reported. "As a result, NASA has determined they are comfortable with up to a five-time reuse for both the Falcon 9 and the Crew Dragon capsule," she said.
The astronauts will board SpaceX's Dragon Endurance spacecraft, which has only been used once previously for the Crew-3 mission, for the Crew-5 mission. The rocket's first-stage booster is brand-new, and the capsule is mounted atop a Falcon 9.
Four astronauts make up Crew-5, including Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann of NASA, Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and Anna Kikina of Roscosmos. In a previous voyage, the first three members of that group were scheduled to go to the International Space Station aboard Boeing's CST-100 Starliner capsule; however, the spacecraft was grounded last year owing to valve corrosion. Kikina will be the first cosmonaut to go in a SpaceX spacecraft to the floating space lab.
In exchange for American astronauts flying on Russia's Soyuz to and from the ISS, NASA and Roscosmos have inked a contract allocating seats to Russian cosmonauts on US spaceflights.