Here’s something to make the next Tax Day a little more bearable.
SpaceX and NASA are focusing on April 15, 2022, for the launch of the Crew-4 mission to the International Space Station, agency authorities reported yesterday (Sept. 7). In the event that all works out as expected, a SpaceX Crew Dragon container will dispatch that day on a Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida.
The Crew Dragon will convey NASA space explorers Kjell Lindgren and Robert Hines and the European Space Agency’s Samantha Cristoforetti, just as a fourth crewmember who has not yet been named.
As its name recommends, Crew-4 will be the carrying contracted space station mission with space travelers that SpaceX flies for NASA. The first of these half year spells, Crew-1, is in the books; it dispatched in November 2020 and got back to Earth this past May. Group 2 dispatched in April and is booked to envelop with early November. SpaceX and NASA are focusing on Oct. 31 for Crew-3’s takeoff.
(SpaceX likewise launched two NASA space travelers to the space station in May 2020. That two-month test mission, known as Demo-2, was SpaceX’s very first maintained spaceflight, and its prosperity made ready for functional missions.)
SpaceX has one more crewed mission on the agenda before Crew-3 — the private Inspiration4 flight, which is planned to dispatch from KSC on Sept. 15. Inspiration4 will send Jared Isaacman, Hayley Arceneaux, Sian Proctor and Christopher Sembroski into space on a Crew Dragon, which will circle Earth solo for three days, then, at that point return for a drop supported splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean.
