NASA canceled the return scheduled for this Thursday of the Crew-4 mission to Earth from the International Space Station (ISS) due to bad weather in the arrival areas off the coast of Florida (USA) and postponed it for this Friday with “a greater certainty of the forecast”.
A few hours before the separation of the Dragon Freedom ship from Space X, with its four crew members on board, NASA flight controllers paused the process and then canceled the departure and initially set for this Friday, at 11:35 a.m. US Eastern Time (15:30 GMT), the new opportunity to return.
Splashdown is expected “several hours later”, at approximately 4:50 p.m. local time (20:50 GMT) off the coast of Florida, the mission blog said.
“Mission teams continue to monitor a cold front passing through Florida on Thursday, October 13, bringing strong winds and rainy weather near the splashdown areas,” the space agency explained.
This is the second postponement of the return of this mission that was initially supposed to start its trip to Earth on Wednesday, but was postponed for this Thursday due to weather conditions in the landing zone.
On board the Dragon Freedom, built by the private firm SpaceX, Commander Kjell Lindgren, his NASA colleagues Jessica Watkins and Bob Hines, and the Italian Samantha Cristoforetti, from the European Space Agency (ESA), will travel.
The Crew-4 mission arrived at the ISS on April 27 to start a six-month scientific mission, during which they carried out, among other things, experiments to study the aging-like changes that microgravity produces in human immune cells and the possible way to reverse them.
Similarly, he experimented with an alternative to concrete made from material found in the dust of the Moon and Mars, with which future space bases would eventually be built and would save long-distance missions.
Last week they received their replacement, that is, the members of Crew-5, the fifth manned mission made jointly between NASA and SpaceX, the firm of billionaire Elon Musk, as part of the space agency’s Commercial Crew Program. and in which Boeing also participates.
The four crew members arrived at the ISS aboard the Dragon Endurance last Thursday, about 30 hours after taking off powered by a Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The six-month Crew-5 mission is comprised of two NASA astronauts, mission commander Nicole Aunapu Mann and pilot Josh Cassada, as well as Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). , and Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina of Roscosmos.