Dress-rehearsal countida sets the stage for the Dragon launch

Four Astronaut This weekend SpaceX Do Dragon The spacecraft crashed Thursday at the Kennedy Space Center for a costume rehearsal countdown to the top of a Falcon 9 rocket, while engineers reviewed preparations and placed tabs on coastal weather. Tropical storm conditions.

Do-1 Commander Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, dressed in a visionary SpaceX pressure suit, will be forced to launch the Pad 39A in a white Tesla SUV at the Kennedy Space Center, as of Saturday. Weather permitting, a launch at 7:49 p.m. EST.

Accompanying astronauts trapped alongside the spacecraft, they named it “Flexibility,” overseeing the high-tech touch-screen display in the Crew Dragon capsule. SpaceX Launch controllers monitored the exercise countdown from Firing Room 4 at NASA’s Launch Control Center, three miles from the pad.

The next big milestone will come on Friday when NASA and SpaceX managers and engineers, following strict coronavirus protocol, will review formal launch preparations to make a final assessment of the team’s readiness for flight.

Forecasters are forecasting 70% of the weather on Saturday evening at the Kennedy Space Center. But the outlook is no less certain when it comes to winds and oceans in the Atlantic Ocean, the northeast trajectory will be after boosting the Crow Dragon in the bit Rabbit of the Falcon 9 space station.

The first phase of the Falcon 9 recovery requires relatively calm seas, which the company plans to re-use for the next Crew Dragon flight six months from now. And in the event of a breakdown, all airways as well as beautiful conditions are needed which can force the crew to board an emergency.

“We’re clearly looking at the weather. The weather is a big deal, weather for many areas.” Cathy LettderNASA’s head of space exploration told SpaceFlight now Friday. “The droneship we need where the first stage landed is actually coming out today. And by the way of the sea and the way of Eta, we’re seeing how quickly that droneship can get it out.”

If the droneship is not at the station on time, there may be an initial delay.

“The landing season for the first phase is a big deal,” Luders said. “This is the stage we’re using for Crew-2, so we care about it. It’s not that we never care about them, but it’s an important stage.”

After crossing Florida on Wednesday, Tropical Storm Eta was expected to make its way to the North Carolina on the East Coast and then to the Atlantic. By Saturday morning, the epicenter was expected to be east of Boston.

SpaceX monitors data with a trajectory of some 50 buys that measures the height of winds and waves, data that will be analyzed before the final decision to continue evaluating.