SpaceX, NASA are ‘go’ for Crew-12 launch Friday

Hey, Space Fans! Welcome to our coverage of NASA’s Crew-12 astronaut launch to the International Space Station.

As I write this, we are less than 24 hours away from what will be two-day trip for NASA and SpaceX’s Crew-12 mission to the ISS. Yesterday, mission managers for SpaceX and NASA completed a Launch Readiness Review, at the end of which they cleared the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft for launch.

Liftoff of Crew-12 is scheduled for 5:51 a.m. EST (1051 GMT), weather permitting. It will launch from SpaceX’s pad at Space Launch Complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, as the company no longer plans to use NASA’s own Pad 39B for Dragon crew launches.

The Crew-12 astronaut team is commanded by astronaut Jessica Meir, with Jack Hathaway serving as pilot. Both are NASA astronauts. Rounding out the crew are European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot of France and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedaev. They will fly an 8-month mission to the ISS.

Crew-12 is a replacement crew for Crew-11, a team of four astronauts who returned to Earth earier than planned last month in what was the first-ever medical evacuation of the space station. Meir and her Crew-12 crewmates were originally scheduled to launch sometime in March, but NASA and SpaceX moved the flight up after the early return of Crew-11.

Space.com’s Josh Dinner is on the scene for the relief crew’s launch and will br providing updates over the next day that I’ll share directly with you here.

You’ll also be able to watch the launch live on this page early Friday, courtesy of NASA TV, with our livestream beginning at 3:15 a.m. EST (0815 GMT).

Tariq Malik