SpaceX is poised to launch its next astronaut mission today (July 31), and you can watch the action live.
A Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to launch the four-person Crew-11 mission to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA from Kennedy Space Center in Florida today at 12:09 p.m. EDT (1609 GMT).
You can watch the liftoff live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA. The agency’s coverage will begin at 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT).
Crew-11 will send NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, along with Kimiya Yui of JAXA (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and cosmonaut Oleg Platonov to the ISS for a roughly six-month stay. Cardman is the mission’s commander, Fincke is the pilot and Yui and Platonov are mission specialists.
If all goes to plan, the mission’s Crew Dragon capsule, named Endeavour, will dock with the orbiting lab on Saturday (Aug. 2) around 3 a.m. EDT (0700 GMT). You’ll be able to watch that milestone live as well.
The Crew-11 astronauts will relieve the four members of SpaceX’s Crew-10, who arrived at the ISS in March. Crew-10 will head home to Earth a few days after Crew-11 docks.
As its name suggests, Crew-11 will be the 11th operational astronaut mission SpaceX flies to and from the ISS under its contract with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
The company has more human spaceflights under its belt than that, however; it flew a crewed test mission to the station in 2020, for example, and has also launched seven private astronaut missions to orbit.
Crew-11 will be the first spaceflight for Cardman and Platonov, the second for Yui and the fourth for Fincke. It will be the sixth mission for Endeavour, which is SpaceX’s most-flown Crew Dragon capsule.
