SpaceX's flight to send the subsequent batch of astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) has been delayed by several weeks after the Falcon 9 rocket that will be used for the trip was damaged during transit.



The SpaceX Crew-5 mission was scheduled to launch in early September, but will continue until Michaelmas, NASA announced. The delay will give Elon Musk's corporation time to repair or replace damaged hardware and longer to install new heat shields, parachutes, and panels under the reusable capsule that carries the astronauts.


"The late September launch will allow SpaceX to finish hardware processing and mission teams will continue to revise the launch date based on the spacecraft's schedule of visits to the space station," the US space agency said in a statement. "Today's Crew-5 launch will happen after the planned Soyuz shutdown and launch from September 16 to 30."

The Falcon 9 rocket was damaged while being transported from the SpaceX factory in Hawthorne, California to its test facility in McGregor, Texas. X-ray inspection also with load and shock analysis confirmed that only part of the rocket's intermediate stage was hit and the rest of the vehicle was intact.

The decision comes after Sandra Magnus, a member of NASA's Aviation Safety Advisory Panel and a former astronaut, recommended that NASA reuse only SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon capsules, which carry astronauts up to 5 times. The Falcon 9 may be a two-stage rocket where the first stage, just like the Dragon capsule, is reusable after repair and recovery.

"Because both NASA and SpaceX have experience working together, and SpaceX has accumulated a history of flying the Falcon 9 booster and Dragon capsule, NASA is thinking carefully about the reuse and reuse certification process," he told the panel. reported SpaceNews in the week. "As a result, NASA found that they were comfortable with up to 5 reuses for the Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon capsules," he said. SpaceX Starship booster ablaze after unexpected ignition

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For the Crew-5 mission, astronauts will board SpaceX's Dragon Endurance capsule, which was used just one occasion for the Crew-3 mission. The capsule is placed atop a Falcon 9 rocket; his first stage booster is new.

Crew-5 consists of 4 astronauts, including Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada of NASA, Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and Anna Kikina of Roskosmos. the primary three of the group were originally scheduled to fly to the International Space Station on a previous mission aboard the Boeing CST-100 Starliner, but the spacecraft grounded last year thanks to corrosion of its valves. Kikina is going to be the first astronaut to fly to the floating space laboratory in a SpaceX capsule.

NASA and Roscosmos recently signed an agreement to supply seats to Russian cosmonauts on American space flights in exchange for American astronauts flying the Russian Soyuz to and from the ISS.