After a brief journey from Houston aboard a NASA private plane, the four astronauts of NASA's SpaceX Crew-6 mission arrived at Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday afternoon.
However, it turns out they will stay on the Space Coast for at least one additional day since their launch has been postponed until Monday, Florida Today reports.
There Is Nothing To Worry About The Slight Change
The Crew-6, a four-person trip to the International Space Station (ISS), was planned to launch on Sunday, February 26 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
However, following a protracted flight readiness review (FRR) on Tuesday, NASA and SpaceX chose to postpone the launch by 24 hours.
According to the current schedule, Crew-6's Dragon capsule Endeavour will be launched on Monday at 1:45 AM EST by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket (0645 GMT).
During a post-FRR conference on Tuesday evening, representatives from SpaceX and NASA claimed the extra day would allow launch teams to fix a few small problems with Endeavour and the Falcon 9.
According to Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, the crew wants to, for instance, examine the thermal performance of the "pod panels" that cover Endeavour's exterior in more detail.
Furthermore, they want to examine the Falcon 9's composite overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs), which are helium-filled cylinders that are kept in the rocket's liquid oxygen tank.
"We have noticed that there was blending done in some areas on the liner, and we have some testing and analysis to go make sure that those are good for flight," Stich said.
According to SpaceThe researchers also discovered a possible problem with a Falcon 9 that was recently used to launch a significant number of SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites into orbit.
It can be remembered that although the Starlink mission was successful, there was a small amount of combustion that could be seen in one of the rocket's engine compartments.
With that said, the Crew-6 team is currently inspecting that other rocket to make sure that there will not be any troubles with combustion for the upcoming astronaut launch.
Read More: SpaceX's Six-Month Crew-6 Mission to Include United Arab Emirates Astronaut Sultan AlNeyadi
What Is The Crew-6 Mission About
Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg of NASA, Sultan Al-Neyadi of the United Arab Emirates, and Andrey Fedyaev of Russia will go to the International Space Station (ISS) on the Crew-6 spacecraft for a nearly six-month stay.
As the first Arab astronaut to perform a long trip to the orbiting lab, Al-Neyadi is set to go down in history, Space claims.
The Crew-6, as its name suggests, will be SpaceX's sixth operational astronaut flight for NASA to the ISS.
In addition to the six, Elon Musk's SpaceX has launched two more crewed flights to the orbiting lab: Demo-2, a test flight for NASA, in 2020; and Ax-1, a private flight run by Houston-based Axiom Space, in April 2022.
Three of those earlier ISS missions, Demo-2, Ax-1, and Crew-2, which launched in April 2021, were piloted by Endeavour.
While Crew-6 will use a brand-new rocket, the Falcon 9 first stage that launched the Starlink batch was in flight for the 12th time, Stich pointed out.
However, before crew-carrying missions, SpaceX and NASA routinely review data from all Falcon 9 flights to inform their analysis.
When this upcoming work is finished, NASA and SpaceX anticipate that Endeavour and its rocket ride will be approved for liftoff.
Related Article: NASA is Planning to Buy 5 More SpaceX Crewed Flights to the ISS
