Space travel
ISS crew has to postpone launch into space again
Alexander Grebenkin (lr), Michael Barratt, Jeanette Epps and Matthew Dominick. photo
© Richard Tribou/TNS via ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, their colleague Jeanette Epps and cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin were actually supposed to fly to the ISS. But the launch had to be postponed.
The start of a new crew to the International Space Station, which was actually planned for the morning German time ISS has been postponed by one day due to weather conditions.
It will now be made up on Monday morning at 4:53 a.m. (CET), as the US space agency Nasa announced via the online platform X. It is the third postponement of the start, which was originally planned for Friday.
The “Crew-8” consisting of three Americans and one Russian is to be brought to the ISS from the Cape Canaveral spaceport in the US state of Florida on board a “Crew Dragon” capsule from the private space company SpaceX owned by tech billionaire Elon Musk. This would be the repeated time since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine that astronauts from both countries would fly into space together, despite the resulting immense tensions between the USA and Russia. Docking of the space capsule is scheduled for Tuesday morning (CET).
Nasa astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, their colleague Jeanette Epps and cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin are expected to conduct research on the ISS for around six months. It will be the first space flight for Epps, Dominick and Grebenkin; Barratt has already visited the ISS twice before. There is currently a seven-person crew on board the space station.