The launch comes just two days after another SpaceX capsule brought four astronauts back to Earth.
Four astronauts braced for launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Wednesday evening to kick off a 22-hour rendezvous with the International Space Station. The launching comes just two days after the crew they are replacing to close out the longest flight in American space history. Crew-3 commander Raja Chari, co-pilot Thomas Marshburn, Kayla Barron and European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer planned to blast off from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center at 9:03 p.m. EST,10 days late because of, a and the Crew Dragon return to Earth Monday. The station was expected to pass by just east of the launch pad about eight minutes before takeoff. Russian flight controllers planned to adjust the station’s orbit slightly a few hours prior to launch to avoid a piece of debris from a Chinese satellite that was destroyed in an anti-satellite weapon test in 2007. The maneuver had no impact on the Crew-3 flight plan and once out of the lower atmosphere, the Falcon 9’s first stage, making its second flight, was expected to separate, flip around and head for landing on an off-shore drone ship stationed several hundred miles downrange in the Atlantic Ocean. If successful, it will mark SpaceX’s 93rd booster recovery and its 70th at sea. The Falcon 9 second stage, meanwhile, will continue the climb to orbit, releasing the Crew Dragon to fly on its own about 12 minutes after liftoff. From there, Chari, a former F-35 test pilot and Air Force combat veteran, will monitor an automated rendezvous with the space station, approaching from behind and below before moving in for docking at the forward port of the lab’s Harmony module around 7:10 p.m. Thursday. A Crew Dragon launched in September had a leaky fitting in its toilet plumbing and a similar issue was found with the Crew-2 Dragon, prompting the returning crew to forego the use of their toilet during the trip back to Earth. The suspect fitting in the Crew-3 capsule was modified before launch and no problems were expected.
