SpaceX to resume astronaut launches on Aug. 18 with Crew-9 mission to ISS

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NASA and SpaceX are looking to launch the Crew-9 mission around the middle of this month.

Crew-9, SpaceX's next astronaut launch to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA, is currently set for Aug. 18. The four astronauts that will be on board are commander Zena Cardman, pilot Nick Hague, mission specialist Stephanie Wilson and mission specialist Alexsandr Gorbunov, of Russia's space agency Roscosmos.

The mission still has to get final launch approval from NASA, after the second stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket failed on July 11 due to an oxygen leak. While the rocket has been cleared for flight and recently resumed uncrewed launches of SpaceX's Starlink satellites, NASA wants to ensure the vehicle is safe for crews ahead of the target Aug. 18 launch date.

"We've been following along all the way through the investigation," said Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, during a Crew-9 media briefing on July 26.

Stich added that SpaceX has already changed out the sensor hardware that was responsible for the July 11 oxygen leak on a separate second stage, and that NASA feels confident the change will certify Crew-9 for launch.

"We followed that testing, and we'll follow the same testing on our stage, so we'll get a check of that sensor in the second stage test," Stich said. "We'll work through all the data, work through all the analysis and certification, and then we'll be ready to go fly."

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As its name implies, Crew-9 will be the ninth astronaut rotation that SpaceX flies to the ISS for NASA. However, it will be the 10th crewed flight of the Dragon spacecraft as part of the space agency's Commercial Crew Program. The first was Demo-2, a two-astronaut test flight to the ISS that launched in May 2020.

Crew Dragon has also flown several private astronaut missions to orbit and to the ISS, including the historic all-civilian Inspiration4 flight in 2021 and three flights for Houston-based Axiom Space.