ISS - Expedition 63 Mission patch.
May 28, 2020
The Expedition 63 crew will wait a few more days to gain two new crewmembers after weather scrubbed the initial launch attempt of the SpaceX Crew Dragon. Meanwhile, the orbiting trio aboard the International Space Station continued focusing on lab operations.
Rain and lightning around Kennedy Space Center kept Commercial Crew members Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken on the ground Wednesday. The Florida weather violated launch rules and SpaceX scrubbed the liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket with the two NASA astronauts atop sitting inside the Crew Dragon vehicle.
Image above: The sun’s rays glisten in this photograph from an external high definition camera as the International Space Station orbited over the Atlantic Ocean southwest of South Africa. Image Credit: NASA.
NASA has rescheduled the Crew Dragon launch for Saturday at 3:22 p.m. EDT with a backup launch date on Sunday at 3 p.m. If Hurley and Behnken launch Saturday, they would dock Sunday at 10:29 a.m. to the Harmony module’s International Docking Adapter.
Back on orbit, NASA Commander Chris Cassidy was setting up Japanese network communications gear and science hardware during the morning. Afterward, the veteran astronaut spent the rest of Thursday exploring how planetary bodies might affect the density and dynamics of different materials.
International Space Station (ISS). Animation Credit: NASA
The Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner started the day transferring cargo to and from the Soyuz crew ship and the two Progress space freighters. The duo then turned its attention to videotaping and photographing their station activities for an Earth audience.
Related article:
Launch of NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 Rescheduled for Saturday, May 30
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2020/05/launch-of-nasas-spacex-demo-2.html
Related links:
Expedition 63: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition63/index.html
Harmony module: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/harmony
Density and dynamics: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=7962
Space Station Research and Technology: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/overview.html
International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html
Image (mentioned), Animation (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Mark Garcia.
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