Clothing-rehearsal countdown sets the stage for SpaceX Crew Dragon launch

Four Astronauts One this weekend SpaceX Crew Dragon The spacecraft was built for a costume rehearsal countdown on a Falcon 9 rocket Thursday at the Kennedy Space Center, while engineers reviewed the products and kept tabs on coastal weather. Tropical storm condition.

Group-1 Commander Michael Hopkins, Victor Clover, Shannon Walker and Japanese astronaut Sochi Nokuchi, dressed in futuristic SpaceX pressure suits, were propelled to launch the Bat39 at the Kennedy Space Center in white Tesla SUVs at 7:49 p.m.

Because the astronauts were built side by side, they named it the “Recession” by monitoring the high-tech touchscreen footage on the Crew Dragon capsule. SpaceX Missile controllers monitored the practice countdown from firing chamber 4 at NASA’s initial control center.

With the next big milestone coming up on Friday, NASA and SpaceX managers and engineers are following a strict corona virus protocol and conducting a formal launch readiness review to make the final assessment of the team’s flight readiness.

Forecasters predict a 70% chance of acceptable weather Saturday evening at the Kennedy Space Center. But the outlook will be less when the Falcon 9 arrives on the northeast path to the wind and sea states in the Atlantic Ocean, which will elevate the Crew Dragon into orbit around the space station.

Recovering the first phase of the Falcon 9 requires relatively calm seas, which the company now plans to re-use for the next Crew Dragon flight in six months. In the event of a malfunction, the entire flight path is generally required to be harmless, which may force crews to perform an emergency splash.

“We obviously see the weather, the weather is a big thing, the weather for many areas,” Kathy Luthers, NASA’s head of space exploration Space Flight Now said Friday. “The droneship we need at the first stage landing is actually out today. And with the way the seas are, and the Etta, we’ll be looking at how quickly that droneship can build it.”

If there is no transship in a timely manner, the launch is often delayed.

“Landing weather for the first phase is a big deal,” Luthers said. “This is the platform we use for Crew-2, so we’re worried about it. We’m not always worried about them, but it’s an important step.”

After passing Florida on Wednesday, tropical storm Eta was expected to follow a parallel path to the East Coast to North Carolina and then into the Atlantic Ocean. By Saturday morning, the center of the storm should be out to sea east of Boston.

SpaceX tracks data from approximately 50 mats along the path measuring air and wave height, which will be analyzed before the final decision to proceed with the launch.