SpaceX lines up overnight launch while prepping for 2nd crewed mission next week
SpaceX is set for another overnight launch from Cape Canaveral as preparations continue for the crewed Axiom Space flight from Kennedy Space Center one week later.
A Falcon 9 with 56 of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites is targeting liftoff from Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 1:03 a.m. Sunday with backup opportunities at 2:44 a.m. and 4:25 a.m. as well as opportunities early Monday. It’s a near repeat of a mission that launched in the wee hours of the morning on May 4.
Space Launch Delta 45’s weather squadron predicts a 95% chance for good conditions and 90% in the case of a 24-hours delay.
The first-stage booster for the mission is making its 11th flight and SpaceX will attempt its recovery again on the droneship Just Read the Instructions stationed down range in the Atlantic Ocean.
It would be the 23rd launch from the Space Coast in 2023 with all but one by Elon Musk’s company.
So far only the Crew-6 flight in March has carried humans to space for SpaceX, but the second human spaceflight is targeting Sunday, May 21 from KSC’s Launch Pad 39-A at 5:37 p.m.
That mission, dubbed Ax-2, is the second ever for Axiom Space, which looks to bring its crew of four to the International Space Station for eight days onboard, part of NASA’s allowance of commercial companies to visit the station. Ax-1 spent two weeks on board in 2022.
Once again, one of the four crew is a former NASA astronaut, but now and Axiom Space employee — Peggy Whitson, who is Axiom’s Director of Human Spaceflight and will act as commander. In the role of pilot is aviator John Shoffner while the remaining crew in the role of mission specialist, are two astronauts with the Saudi Space Commission — Rayyanah Barnawi and Ali AlQarni.
The quartet will be riding in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Freedom making only its second spaceflight following 2022’s Crew-4 mission that spent April-October attached to the ISS.
They will increase the ISS population from seven to 11 and become the second Crew Dragon docked to the station with Crew-6 in the midst of their six-month stay.
While only the second Crew Dragon flight of 2023, SpaceX has as many as three more that could fly before the end of the year including the Polaris Dawn mission, and orbital flight that will be the second to space for billionaire Jared Issacman targeting this summer; the planned August flight of the next rotational mission to the ISS, Crew-7; and a possible third Axiom Space mission.
SpaceX has been flying humans to the ISS as well as one orbital flight on its Crew Dragon since May 2020, having already taken up 34 passengers to space. Crew Dragon and Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner were the two spacecraft that NASA contracted for rotational crew missions to the ISS, but Starliner has yet to complete its first crewed test flight, although that is slated for July.
