SpaceX F9 - Crew 6 - LC-39A

Launch Date: March 2
Launch Window: 12:34am EST (9:34pm PST on the 1st, 05:34 UTC on the 2nd)
Launch site: LC-39A, Cape Canaveral, Florida
Booster Recovery: ASDS - JRTI
Booster: B1078.1
Dragon: Crew Dragon, C206.4 Endeavor
Mass: Crew Dragon: 12,519 kg (27,600 lb)
Orbit: LEO - ISS
Dragon Return - TBD
Yearly Launch Number: 14th

Crew for Expedition 69:
Commander: Stephen Bowen, NASA
Pilot: Warren Hoburg, NASA
Mission Specialist 1: Sultan Al Neyadi, MBRSC
Mission Specialist 2: Andrey Fedyaev, Roscosmos

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch a Crew Dragon spacecraft on its ninth flight with astronauts. The Falcon 9’s first stage booster will land on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen, Warren Hoburg, MBRSC astronaut Sultan Al Neyadi, and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev will launch on the Crew Dragon spacecraft to begin a six-month expedition on the International Space Station. The Crew Dragon will return to a splashdown at sea.

On 29 April 2022, the Mohammad bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) and Axiom Space announced that Crew-6 will also include an astronaut from the United Arab Emirates.

MBRC participation in this mission is a by product of a 2021 agreement between NASA and Axiom to fly a NASA astronaut, Mark T. Vande Hei onboard Soyuz MS-18 (launch) and Soyuz MS-19 (return) in order to ensure a continuing American presence onboard the ISS. In return, Axiom received the rights to a NASA owned seat onboard SpaceX Crew-6. Axiom provided the flight opportunity to MBRSC professional crew member through an agreement with the UAE. Later the astronaut was confirmed to be Sultan Al Neyadi. Andrey Fedyaev was selected in July 2022 for this mission as a part of the Soyuz-Dragon crew swap system of keeping at least one NASA astronaut and one Roscosmos cosmonaut on each of the crew rotation missions. This ensures both countries have a presence on the station, and the ability to maintain their separate systems if either Soyuz or commercial crew vehicles are grounded for an extended period.

SpaceX Crew-6 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Crew Dragon Endeavour - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

List of International Space Station expeditions - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Crew-6 Mission | Launch

SpaceX and NASA are targeting no earlier than Monday, February 27 for Falcon 9’s launch of Dragon’s sixth operational human spaceflight mission (Crew-6) to t...

www.youtube.com

 

[808?]

Crew Dragon arrives at LC-39A

https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/116oxb4

 

[Grendal]

 

[Grendal]

 

[Grendal]

Crew-6 launch slips as Progress leak investigation continues

NASA has delayed the launch of a commercial crew mission to the space station by a day to give SpaceX additional time to complete work on the vehicle.

spacenews.com

 

[808?]

 

[Grendal]

 

[ecarfan]

Just catching up on this mission; scrubbed at T-02:38. What was the issue?

 

[ecarfan]

From the WSJ:

SpaceX and NASA called off a crewed launch to the International Space Station after an issue related to the TEA-TEB ignition fluid was detected, the agencies said.

And from Wccftech:

as the countdown neared to liftoff, mission controllers informed the crew on board that the teams were encountering a problem with loading the ignition fluid on the Falcon 9 rocket.

The Merlin igniter fluid is loaded on the vehicle that late in the countdown?

 

[ecarfan]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1630099050862374913

 

[scaesare]

The Merlin igniter fluid is loaded on the vehicle that late in the countdown?

Yeah that does seem like it's cutting it close. I know some of that stuff can be toxic/corrosive, but they keep it in tanks aboard other aircraft (SR-71 comes to mind) for the duration of entire flights, so it would seem that another few minutes of margin would be doable. Wonder what the reason is...

 

[Grendal]

The Merlin igniter fluid is loaded on the vehicle that late in the countdown?

The other possibility is that the reporter didn't understand the situation and misinterpreted what was said during the scrub debriefing. According to Space News article, a sensor said the TEA-TEB wasn't "fully loaded." Which makes more sense than loading the fluids in the last two minutes of the launch sequence. I'm sure it still takes place sometime during the fuel loading process, which is during the last hour prior to launch.

Technical issue scrubs SpaceX commercial crew launch

A last-minute problem with an ignition system halted a Falcon 9 launch of a NASA commercial crew mission Feb. 27, delaying the launch by at least 3 days.

spacenews.com

 

[scaesare]

The other possibility is that the reporter didn't understand the situation and misinterpreted what was said during the scrub debriefing. According to Space News article, a sensor said the TEA-TEB wasn't "fully loaded." Which makes more sense than loading the fluids in the last two minutes of the launch sequence. I'm sure it still takes place sometime during the fuel loading process, which is during the last hour prior to launch.

Technical issue scrubs SpaceX commercial crew launch

A last-minute problem with an ignition system halted a Falcon 9 launch of a NASA commercial crew mission Feb. 27, delaying the launch by at least 3 days.

spacenews.com

That makes more sense... fluid loaded earlier and sensor malfunction at the last minute.

 

[Electroman]

What a bummer.. SpaceX sends payloads every week and I can't recollect the last time they scrubbed for a non-weather, non-range event. It happens in what one in 100 launches maybe? And that happened during a Crew launch. That is unfortunate.

 

[ecarfan]

As Gywnne likes to say, a million things have to go right for a launch, and it only takes one thing to make a launch go wrong.

To me it’s amazing that a scrub unrelated to weather or range happens so rarely.

 

[Grendal]

What a bummer.. SpaceX sends payloads every week and I can't recollect the last time they scrubbed for a non-weather, non-range event. It happens in what one in 100 launches maybe? And that happened during a Crew launch. That is unfortunate.

It is a new booster. As SpaceX and Elon brought up long ago, that a "flight proven" booster is less likely to have problems than a new unproven booster.

 

[ecarfan]

Except SpaceX states the problem is a “ground issue”, which to me implies it is not an issue with the booster.

Shortly after the scrub, SpaceX tweeted a little bit more information about the cause: "Standing down from tonight's launch of Crew-6 due to a TEA-TEB ground system issue," the company said.

Eric Berger’s article posted last night does not discuss when the TEA-TEB is loaded onto the vehicle.

 

[scaesare]

Except SpaceX states the problem is a “ground issue”, which to me implies it is not an issue with the booster.


Eric Berger’s article posted last night does not discuss when the TEA-TEB is loaded onto the vehicle.

lol:

"The best thing about TEA-TEB is that it ignites on contact with air," SpaceX's original launch director, Tim Buzza, said. "The worst thing about TEA-TEB is that it ignites on contact with air."

 

[808?]

Updated video link:

 

[Grendal]

Absolutely flawless launch to orbit and recovery of the booster.