Washington: After a series of delays, private companies Elon Musk SpaceX launched four astronauts to the International Space Station on Wednesday night on the “Crew-3” mission.
Outpost Orbitals currently operate with only one NASA astronaut in the US segment to welcome the entry crew, after the astronauts of the previous Crew-2 mission in Canripak in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday night.
Crew-3 King Chari, Kayla Barron and Tom Marshburn United States and Matthias Maurer from Germany exploded on Crew Dragon ship set to Rocket Falcon 9 at 9:03 pm local time (0203 GMT Thursday) from the Kennedy Room Center in Florida.
The launch was welcomed by applause in the SpaceX control room.
The spacecraft, called durability, will be anchored with an ISS at 19:10 Thursday (0010 GMT Friday).
This flight was initially postponed from the first October 31 for the weather, then “Minor Medical Problems” which affected one of the crews.
NASA did not say who it was but said it was not related to Covid.
Astronauts, from the left, Matthias Maurer, from Germany, Tom Marshburn, King Chari, and Kayla Barron pose for photos after leaving the operation and checkout of the building to travel to PAD 39-day Wednesday at the Kennedy room center at Cape Canaveral, FLA.
Chari, the US Air Force Colonel, ordered a mission and made his first trip into space, along with Barron and Maurer.
Marshburn, a doctor, flew up a shuttle in 2009 and the Russian Soyuz spacecraft in a mission began 2012-13.
Barron, who along with Chari was chosen for the Astronaut NASA corps in 2017, the latest recruitment, previously served as a submarine war officer for the Navy, while Maurer, a material science engineer, would be the 12th German in Kosmos.
Crew-3 is part of the multibilion-dollar NASA partnership with SPACEX signed after ending the space shuttle program in 2011 and aims to restore US capacity to do human spaces.
Head of Nasa Bill Nelson said he would attend launch Wednesday.
The quartet will spend six months on outpost orbitals and conduct research to help inform spacecraft exploration in the future and benefit the life on earth.
The scientific spotlight of this mission includes experiments to grow plants in space without land or other growth media, and others to build optical fibers in micro, which have been suggested by previous studies will be superior to the earth.
The 3rd Astronaut will also carry out spacecraft to complete the upgrade of solar panels of the station and will be present for two tourism missions, including Japanese visitors on the Soyuz Russian spacecraft at the end of the year and the Axiom Space-X crew, set to be launched on February 2022.