NASA's SpaceX Crew 11 and rocket are now ready for launch
The final pieces are in place for NASA’s next astronaut launch. The international crew for the agency's SpaceX Crew-11 mission arrived at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday, just days after their rocket was rolled out to the launch pad.
The four crew members — NASA's Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, JAXA's astronaut Kimiya Yui, and Roscosmos' Oleg Platonov — landed at the launch facility after a two-hour flight from Houston. They will now spend the remaining days in quarantine and conduct final preflight operations ahead of their mission to the International Space Station. This will be the first spaceflight for Cardman and Platonov, the second for Yui, and the fourth for NASA's veteran astronaut, Fincke.
Meanwhile, their ride to space is already in position. On Sunday, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with the Dragon crew spacecraft mounted, was moved to Launch Complex 39A and raised into a vertical launch position. The crew will fly aboard the veteran Dragon spacecraft that has previously completed five other missions, including the first private astronaut flight to the space station.
This flight is the 11th crew rotation mission that NASA has conducted under its Commercial Crew Program. The launch is targeted for no earlier than 4:09 PM UTC on Thursday, July 31. The launch will come just a day after the launch of NASA-ISRO’s revolutionary satellite NISAR, which will take place tomorrow, July 30.
