NASA announces plans to push back launch date for Crew-8 mission
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Flor. (NBC, KYMA/KECY) - NASA announced plans on Thursday to push back the launch date for its Crew-8 mission.
The eighth mission of NASA's Commercial Crew Program's launch has been delayed, mainly because of traffic. As of now, the launch is outlooked for late February.
Busy times on the ground and in orbit.
"The one thing on the ground is that we're going to work around a very important NASA commercial Lunar Payload system...To deliver payloads to the South Pole of the Moon," said Steve Stich with NASA's Commerical Program.
A tight launch window
The moon mission with a tight launch window and has to go from pad 39A, where crewed missions also need to launch.
There's a lot of traffic on the International Space Station (I.S.S.). Crewed missions, like AX-3 that went up last week, and critical resupply missions will free up toward the end of February.
On Crew-8, four astronauts will travel in SpaceX's Crew Dragon Endeavor, launching atop a new Falcon 9 booster.
The Crew-8 mission update came on on NASA Remembrance Day.
Contributions
At a ceremony held at the Kennedy Space Center, Lowell Grissom, the brother of "Gus" Grissom, an Apollo 1 astronaut killed in a capsule fire during ground testing, spoke about his brother's contribution.
I think those early astronauts gave us that start and got us to the point where we are today."
Lowell Grissom, "Gus" Grissom's brother
An idea not lost on the four launching next month. Three NASA astronauts, Commander Matthew Dominick, pilot Michael Barratt, engineer Jeanette Epps, and one Russian cosmonaut, Alexander Grebenkin.
They also spoke about the mission on Thursday, with Barratt saying:
"Now we are deemed spaceflight ready. And it gives us that chance to pause and to think about all the people, the large community that helped get us and our spaceships ready to go."
When they do go, and are up on the I.S.S., they will conduct 200 experiments while in low Earth orbit for their 180-day mission.
