Four astronauts could blast off to the International Space Station (ISS) next week, after setbacks including a mysterious medical evacuation of the previous crew, last-minute rocket problems, and some scheduling conflicts with NASA’s Moon mission.
The crew was scheduled to launch on February 11, Elon Musk’s SpaceX company said this week it was grounding all flights on its Falcon 9 rocket while it investigates an unspecified issue.
This late uncertainty is just the most recent twist for the SpaceX Crew-12 mission, which includes Americans Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, French astronaut Sophie Adenot and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.
They will be replacing Crew-11, which returned to Earth in January, a month earlier than planned, during the first medical evacuation in the space station’s history.
NASA has declined to disclose any details about the health issue that cut the mission short.
Since then, though, a skeleton team of three has been working in the 400-kilometer-high scientific laboratory.
NASA pushed ahead the Crew-12 launch date by a few days due to the medical evacuation.
Additionally, the launch coincided with NASA’s first lunar orbit mission in nearly 50 years.
The Artemis 2 mission’s launch window was originally scheduled for February 6–11, however leaks found this week during final testing caused the date to be moved back to March 6.
