On Monday morning, NASA released its finalized plan for the sequence of events. It also considered conditions along the ascent "corridor" across the northern Atlantic Ocean, where a recovery would need to be made in the case of an emergency during the mission's launch. NASA did so after assessing weather conditions at the landing sites for Endeavour in the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean, as well as launch site weather for Crew-3. This weekend, the agency decided to push the landing of Crew-2 ahead of the Crew-3 launch. The Endeavour spacecraft has now been in space for 199 days, which is fairly close to the vehicle's certified mission length of 210 days. AdvertisementĪmong the most significant factors is the duration of the Crew-2 mission, which launched on April 23, 2021. Since that time, NASA and SpaceX, which provides the Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 launch system, have been evaluating a host of issues in order to determine how best to launch the Crew-3 mission and return the four Crew-2 astronauts from the International Space Station.
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The agency's crew flight plans have been in flux since just before Halloween, when weather concerns and then a "minor medical issue" with one of the four astronauts on the Crew-3 mission delayed the rocket's launch from October 31 into November. Original post: NASA and SpaceX plan to return one Crew Dragon spacecraft from orbit on Monday evening and launch another two days later, on Wednesday night. NASA and SpaceX will conduct a Launch Readiness Review on Tuesday ahead of the Crew-3 launch, during which the parachute issue will certainly be subjected to some extended discussions. "It is behavior we’ve seen multiple times in other tests, and it usually happens when the lines kind of bunch up together until the aero forces kind of open up and spread the chutes. The thing that makes me feel a little bit more confident is that the loading and the deceleration of the spacecraft all looked nominal." "The team will be going off and looking at how the loading was on the chute and understanding that behavior," NASA's chief of human spaceflight operations, Kathy Lueders, said after the landing.
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It seems possible that this mission could be delayed due to the parachute issue observed Monday night. Another Crew Dragon spacecraft, carrying NASA's Crew-3 mission, is set to launch from Florida in less than two days. The crew emerged from the spacecraft less than an hour later, onboard a recovery ship, no worse for wear.
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Despite this, the commentators on the NASA-SpaceX livestream indicated that the fourth parachute's inflation rate was normal, and the spacecraft's descent speed nominal. Three of the four parachutes came out nominally, but inflation of the fourth parachute was delayed by a fraction of a minute. The spacecraft's return to Earth seemed nominal up until four minutes before splashdown, when the vehicle's main parachutes deployed. The water landing capped a successful 199-day mission to the International Space Station. 11:30pm ET Monday update: Crew Dragon Endeavour safely splashed down into the Northern Gulf of Mexico on Monday evening, just south of Pensacola, Florida.