Joe Skipper, Steve Gorman

CAPE CANAVERAL (Fla.) – SpaceX, Elon Musk’s private rocket firm, will launch four additional astronauts to NASA’s International Space Station on Wednesday. This included a veteran spacewalker as well as two young crew members who were selected to participate in NASA’s future lunar missions.

SpaceX built the launch vehicle consisting of a Crew Dragon capsule mounted atop a Falcon 9 two-stage rocket. The SpaceX launched vehicle will take off at 9:03 (0200 GMT Thursday), from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral.

If everything goes according to plan, three American astronauts will land around 22 hours later with their European Space Agency (ESA); they’ll dock 250 miles (400km) high at the Earth station and begin six month-long science missions aboard the orbiting laboratory.

Liftoff had originally been scheduled for Oct. 31, but was repeatedly delayed due to severe weather. The first time a NASA mission has been delayed due to a health issue was in 1990.

The crew, their launch vehicles and spacecraft were ready to liftoff as of Tuesday night. Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew manager, stated that the weather was perfect for launch.

The SpaceX astronauts are joined by Raja Chari (44), Tom Marshburn (61), and Kayla Barron (34). Matthias Maurer is a German astronaut.

Chari is a U.S. Air Force combat pilot and test pilot. Barron (a U.S. Navy submarine officer, nuclear engineer, and Maurer (a materials scientist engineer) are also making their spaceflights aboard Dragon, dubbed Endurance.

SpaceX predicts that the rookies will make SpaceX’s 600th, 599th, and 601st astronauts.

Chari, Barron, and the other 18 astronauts were selected by NASA last year to be part of the upcoming Artemis missions. They are slated for return humans to the Moon later in this decade, over a century after the Apollo lunar programme ended.

Stich stated that spaceflight experiences in low-Earth orbit, aboard the station and on the ground are “a tremendous training ground for the kind of skills we will need to return to Artemis,”

Marshburn is a former NASA flight surgeon and a doctor. He has logged four spacewalks as well as two spaceflights. His 13-member crew helped to assemble the station in 2009. They returned to Earth in an 2012-2013 mission.

‘CREW 3’

The successful liftoff on Wednesday, if it goes as planned, will be SpaceX’s fifth successful human spaceflight. It follows its September launch of “Inspiration 4”, which sent an all-civil crew into orbit.

This latest mission will mark the fourth spacecraft crew NASA has sent to orbit on a SpaceX rocket in just 17 months. It builds upon a public-private partnership formed with SpaceX in 2002 by Musk (NASDAQ:) Inc.

NASA’s collaboration with them helped to herald a new age. Last year saw its first American astronaut launch from American soil since 2011, nine years ago.

Following a trial flight with two astronauts in May 2020, NASA and SpaceX now have the crew ready for launch on Wednesday.

Four astronauts from Crew 2 successfully returned to Earth on Monday after a record-breaking 199 days orbit. After an eight-hour return journey, they splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico in Florida.

Also, the latest mission comes after a series of high-profile recent astro-tourism flight launches. Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic Holding Inc were the SpaceX competitors in July. They launched back-toback SpaceX flights along with Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos, their billionaire founders.

William Shatner (90), an actor best known for his role as Captain James T. Kirk on the 1960’s TV series “Star Trek”, rode aboard Blue Origin rockets to reach the age of 90 to be the oldest human to fly into space.

Three current crew members, two Russian and one Belarusian cosmonauts and an American astronaut will welcome Crew 3. They were the ones who flew Soyuz to orbit earlier in the year.