NASA To Host Briefing On SpaceX’s Second Crewed Operational Flight

SpaceX will launch its second crewed operational flight under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program sometime in Spring, no earlier than April 20. The mission, known as Crew-2, will launch an international crew of four astronauts atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex-39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The astronauts who will conduct the Crew-2 mission are: NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, astronaut Akihiko Hoshide who works for Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas Pesquet. The quartet will ride SpaceX’s Crew Dragon towards the orbiting laboratory. NASA announced it will host briefings early next week to discuss the Crew-2 mission plans. It will start with a pair of news conferences scheduled for Monday, March 1st at 12:30 p.m. EST, you can watch a live broadcast of the briefing in the video below, via NASA TV. 

NASA and SpaceX representatives will discuss with the astronaut crew about their upcoming mission to ISS at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The first briefing will be a ‘Crew-2 Mission Overview News Conference’ with the following participants: NASA Associate Administrator for human exploration and operations Kathy Lueders, Manager of the Commercial Crew Program Steve Stich, International Space Station manager Joel Montalbano and SpaceX Senior Director of Human Spaceflight Programs Benji Reed, alongside JAXA vice president and director general of Human Spaceflight Technology Hiroshi Sasak, and ESA Human and Robotic Exploration Director David Parker. By 2:00 p.m. EST on Monday, the second conference will feature discussions will Crew-2 astronauts.

During the Crew-2 Mission, NASA astronaut Kimbrough will be spacecraft commander. He has been an astronaut since 2004; has spent a total of 189 days in space, and performed six spacewalks. This upcoming flight will be his third trip to space. NASA Astronaut McArthur will be Crew-2 pilot. She has been to space once in 2009, spending 12 days and 21 hours in space, during the final Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission. Crew-2 will be JAXA Astronaut Hoshide’s third spaceflight, he has spent a total of 124-days at the station. ESA Astronaut Pesquet will be Crew-1 mission specialist, he has 196 days of experience in space.

NASA says Crew-2 is “expected to arrive at the space station to overlap with the astronauts that flew to the station as part of the agency’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission,” the agency shared in a press release. Crew-1 (first crewed operational flight) is expected to return to Earth until April or May. Meanwhile, Crew-1 astronauts will perform spacewalks on Sunday morning at 4:30 a.m. EST to upgrade  Space Station’s power system. You can watch it Live in the video below, courtesy of NASA.

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All Images Source: NASA