Here’s what you need to know:
When is the launch, and how can I watch it?
On Saturday, for the first time since the retirement of the space shuttles in July 2011, NASA astronauts are scheduled to blast off from American soil on an American rocket to the International Space Station. In contrast to astronaut launches in the past when NASA ran the show, this time a private company, SpaceX, will be in charge of mission control. The company, founded by Elon Musk, built the Falcon 9 rocket and the capsule, Crew Dragon, which the two astronauts will travel in.
The mission is scheduled to lift off at 3:22 p.m. Eastern time from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Coverage of the launch on NASA Television began at 11 a.m.
The Times will also provide live video of the launch.
How’s the weather looking today?
Not the most promising. Weather forecasts currently give a 50 percent chance of favorable conditions at the launch site. The next opportunity on Sunday is slightly better, with a 60 percent chance of favorable conditions; if that doesn’t work, they will try yet again on Tuesday.
Lifting off in bad weather can be catastrophic to rockets. During the countdown, about 10 members of the 45th Weather Squadron, part of the United States Space Force, keep a close eye on conditions to see if they fall within predetermined launch criteria. If the weather conditions violate the criteria, SpaceX’s launch director will call off the launch.
The biggest concern is lightning — a bolt of electricity can zap crucial electronics, leading to loss of the rocket.
Rules prohibit launches for 30 minutes after lightning is observed within a dozen miles of the launchpad or along the trajectory the rocket will fly.
There is danger even when no lightning is flashing in the sky. As a rocket zooms through a turbulent cloud full of electric charge, it can trigger a lightning strike. That is essentially the same thing as when you zap yourself with static electricity.
Such a lightning bolt occurred during the launch of the Apollo 12 moon mission in 1969. One of the engineers in mission control remembered there was a switch that essentially rebooted the computer. The astronauts flipped it, and the mission successfully continued.
After Apollo 12, new launch rules were added specifying the minimum distance of various types of thunderstorm clouds from the launchpad.
For the Crew Dragon launch, SpaceX also wants the rocket not to pass through precipitation — especially pellets of ice — as it accelerates upward.
On Wednesday, when the SpaceX launch was called off before liftoff, two of the prohibited clouds were over the launchpad: cumulus clouds and “attached anvil” clouds, both of which can generate lightning. The “no precipitation” rule was also violated.
The launch team had not called off the countdown earlier, because it had appeared that the clouds would move away in time. But convection in the atmosphere generated more storm activity and that meant the unsettled weather remained over the launchpad longer.
Fifteen minutes after the scheduled launch time, “we were good,” said Mike McAleenan, the launch weather officer.
But the launch had to occur at a precise moment to allow the Crew Dragon to meet up with the space station, and there is no leeway for delays.
For the safety of the crew, the launch team also has to consider weather and ocean conditions just off the coast, where the capsule would splash down if there were an emergency on the launchpad or farther away in the Atlantic if a problem occurred on the way to orbit.
Who is blasting off?
The astronauts are Robert L. Behnken and Douglas G. Hurley, who have been friends and colleagues since both were selected by NASA to be astronauts in 2000.
They both have backgrounds as military test pilots and have each flown twice previously on space shuttle missions, although this is the first time they have worked together on a mission. Mr. Hurley flew on the space shuttle’s final mission in 2011.
In 2015, they were among the astronauts chosen to work with Boeing and SpaceX on the commercial space vehicles that the companies were developing. In 2018, they were assigned to the first SpaceX flight.
Wednesday’s launch preparations began with the astronauts donning their spacesuits with the assistance of SpaceX technicians. Jim Bridenstine, the NASA administrator, and Jim Morhard, the deputy administrator, visited them in the suit-up room. Each kept a social distance and wore a surgical mask, and Mr. Bridenstine posed with the astronauts for a selfie.
Just after noon, the astronauts were seen off by their families ahead of their drive to the launchpad. Mr. Behnken asked his son, Theodore, “Are you going to listen to mommy and make her life easy,” referring to his wife, Megan McArthur, a fellow astronaut. The six-year-old replied, “Let’s light this candle!”
What are they flying in?
SpaceX has never taken people to space before. Its Crew Dragon is a gumdrop-shaped capsule — an upgraded version of SpaceX’s original Dragon capsule, which has been used many times to carry cargo, but not people, to the space station.
Crew Dragon has space for up to seven people but will have only four seats for NASA missions. If this launch succeeds, it will ferry four astronauts to the space station later in the year.
What about those spacesuits they’re wearing?
Michael Bay, the director of the 1998 cosmic disaster movie “Armageddon,” once gave an interview discussing the worst crisis in the making of the film.
“Three weeks before our first day of principal photography, I went to see the spacesuits,” he said. “They looked like an Adidas jogging suit on a rack. That’s where I almost killed myself.” Because, he said, if you don’t have “cool” spacesuits, the whole movie is sunk.
Apparently Elon Musk ascribes to the same school of thought.
Or so it seems judging from the white and black launch and re-entry suits the astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley will wear when they hop into their white and black Tesla and ride to the Cape Canaveral launchpad to climb into the white and black SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule for the maiden voyage of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station.
After all, when it comes to capturing the public imagination around space travel, style matters.
“Suits are the charismatic mammals of space hardware,” said Cathleen Lewis, the curator of international space programs and spacesuits at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution. “They evoke the human experience.”
Actually, what the SpaceX suits evoke most of all is James Bond’s tuxedo if it were redesigned by Tony Stark as an upgrade for James T. Kirk’s next big adventure. Streamlined, graphic and articulated, the suits are more a part of the pop culture-comic con continuum of space style than the NASA continuum.
Shrugging off coronavirus, Florida crowds will grow.
Despite warnings from NASA to stay home to limit the spread of the coronavirus, about 150,000 people came out to view the launch on Wednesday in the parts of Florida around Kennedy Space Center. Peter Cranis, the executive director of the Space Coast Office of Tourism, which made that estimate, said he’s expecting another few hundred thousand viewers this weekend.
Local government officials also anticipated Saturday’s crowds will swamp Wednesday’s numbers.
“Thousands, tens of thousands, heck, hundreds of thousands? There’s just no way to put a number to it,” said Don Walker, the communications director of Brevard County Emergency Management.
The Kennedy Space Center was not open to the public on Wednesday, but its visitor center will be partially opened on Saturday, Bob Cabana, the center’s director, said at a news conference on Friday.
Jim Bridenstine, NASA’s administrator, said guests were to observe social distancing guidelines on the agency’s grounds.
“What we expect is that when people come here, they follow the guidance of the governor.”
Following scenes of packed bridges on Wednesday, Mr. Walker said there will be increased law enforcement presence this weekend.
“While there’s no real way to enforce it, we have asked people through media interviews, press releases, social media, you name it, to do their best to follow C.D.C. social distancing recommendations,” he said.
Ben Malik, the mayor of Cocoa Beach, south of the space center, said his town’s beach was packed on Wednesday and that its hotels are fully booked this weekend.
“There was little to no social distancing on Wednesday,” Mr. Malik said. “It was a little scary. At this point, you’d have to have thousands and thousands of police officers and that’s not physically possible.”
What have the astronauts been doing since Wednesday?
They have been staying in quarantine at the crew quarters at the Kennedy Space Center. It has been used for astronauts preparing for missions since the 1960s, taking up about 26,000 square feet and 23 bedrooms — not only for astronauts, but also for flight surgeons and support personnel.
The crew quarters includes a kitchen, dining room, lounge, gym, two conference rooms, two laundry rooms and three medical exam rooms.
The purpose of quarantine is not to keep the astronauts locked up, but to limit contacts with people who could pass on germs. At a news conference on Friday, Jim Bridenstine, the NASA administrator, said they might go to a building closer to the ocean known as the Beach House.
“They might spend a little time at the Beach House,” Mr. Bridenstine said. “They started a new tradition of launching rockets from the beach, at the Beach House before a big launch. And so I would imagine they’re probably getting some downtime.”
On Tuesday, the day before the first launch attempt, Mr. Behnken posted on Twitter a summary of some of their activities.
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