NASA and SpaceX are targeting Monday, Feb. 27, for the launch of the Crew-6 mission to the International Space Station (ISS). If all goes according to plan, the mission will depart from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center at 1:45 a.m. local time, carrying NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg, United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev to the ISS for a six-month scientific research mission. More than 200 experiments and technology demonstrations are planned for their stay including studies on how materials burn in microgravity, tissue chip research on heart, brain and cartilage functions, and investigating microbial samples collected from the outside of the space station.
Crew-6 is the sixth crew rotation mission for SpaceX as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. It will use a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft, Endeavour, which has previously flown to the ISS on the NASA Demo-2, NASA Crew-2 and Axiom Space Ax-1 missions. According to NASA, an integrated static fire test and dry dress rehearsal with the crew will take place prior to the launch. The agency reported that weather officials with Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s 45th Weather Squadron have predicted that there is a 95 percent chance of favorable weather conditions for Monday’s launch window.
Why are we taking a Russian? While they provided lift when we weren’t capable, they were not at war and hadn’t invaded a sovereign nation at that point.
Russian soccer clubs and national teams have been suspended from all competitions by Fifa and Uefa. Formula 1 has terminated its contract with the Russian Grand Prix. In response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Olympics governing body has now banned “all athletes, support personnel and officials from Russia and Belarus” from participation in “all World Athletics Series events for the foreseeable future, with immediate effect”. The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) suspended “all Russian and Belarusian national teams and clubs from participation in every age category and in all IIHF competitions or events”. Heck even the Badminton World Federation (BWF) has suspended any athletes from Russia or Belarus from competing in events and has cancelled competitions due to be staged in those countries.
If you aren’t allowed to play competitive Badminton you shouldn’t be able to ride on our rockets. I am comfortable with that litmus test.
The INTERNATIONAL Space Station is dependent on both the US and Russia for continued operation. It’s can’t be separated, there is too much interdependence. This crew is an extension (if a slightly weird one) of that.
“Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev”
Roscosmos?
A new euphemism?
I believe Roscosmos is Russia’s equivalent to NASA.
The term “Roscosmos Cosmonaut” in Russia is equivalent to the term “NASA Astronaut” in the US.
I could be wrong though. No research went into this comment.
Income. Pure income. When our Astronauts used there capsule to get to space doing the time of the Space shuttles ending we paid millions and I’m not giving it the just due as it was more then that, each flight we went back and forth. Now the Russians are paying us dearly to use our flights. Not to mention, it’s a contractual deal. Russians have already made their notice of no longer utilizing the iss after such date and going to go into venture with the Chinese and them building their own. I’m sure there’s other countries doing the same intentions to use China’s like Iran, others that haven’t their own funding to building their own. In my thinking, it’s the whole spacewar setup.
Sorry I missed another reason why we taking Russians back and forth at a get amounts of money and is not only contractual but also a life providing life safety.
I think the Russians still use their own capsule’s to transfer their experiments back to earth since we aren’t moving these supposedly for “secret” reasons. They might be moving their capsule for a small amount of crew members but that number wouldn’t be enough to maintain things before moving out.
This deal will discontinue on the real near deal since the Red’s aka Russians already given their notice of moving out. It’s also for humane/safety. But again don’t worry about the ways but certainly look into the amount of money they are paying for these rides. Now that war is starting to effect these monies it’s possible this contract will end sooner then they would think.
I don’t know if they’re paying or not as we’re sending astronauts up on their craft. MS-22 (launched 9/2022) had American astronaut Francisco Rubio on board. That’s the vessel that sprung a coolant leak awhile back and effectively stranded those cosmonauts and astronaut until MS-23 can be launched in a bit. However, I think they’ve decided to extend their stay until sometime in the summer. I also read that if for some reason they had to evacuate the station NOW, provisions could be made in the currently docked SpaceX capsule for them.
I don’t like what Russia has done any more than any other American. There is a perfect line in the movie 2010 Space Odyssey where Roy Scheider’s character is discussing with the Russian craft commander emergency plans to return to earth when the Russian is reluctant; “just because our governments are acting like idiots doesn’t mean we have to”.
Durak.
(Relevant quote from movie 🙂