LOS ANGELES, SEPT 29 – NASA and SpaceX launched a new crew rotation mission from Florida, United States (US) to the International Space Station (ISS) yesterday, Xinhua reported.
The mission, codenamed ‘Crew-9’, carried NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov to the ISS. This is NASA’s ninth commercial crew rotation mission with SpaceX.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the crew aboard the Dragon spacecraft from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 1:17 pm ET (1817 GMT) yesterday. The spacecraft is scheduled to dock with the ISS at 5:30 p.m. Eastern Time (2230 GMT) today, according to NASA.
Crew-9 members will conduct more than 200 scientific investigations involving the study of blood clotting, the effects of humidity on plants grown in space and changes in vision in astronauts, NASA said.
The spacecraft is expected to return to Earth next February with Crew-9 astronauts, as well as NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who left for the station in June on a Boeing Starliner but suffered damage and have since been stranded in space. – Named
