Crew 8

[Yazata]

A Falcon 9 has been mated with a Crew Dragon and erected at Pad 39A at Cape Canaveral.

The booster is B1083 on its very first flight. It will be a return-to-launch-site flight and will land at LZ-1 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Base.

The Crew Dragon is C206 Endeavor on its fifth flight.

The crew comprises NASA astronauts Commander Matthew Dominick, Pilot Michael Barratt, and Mission Specialist Jeanette Epps, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Mission Specialist Alexander Grebenkin.

Launch is scheduled for Thu Feb 29, 2024 9:04 PM PST/Fri March 1, 2024 12:04 AM EST/05:04 UTC

It's kind of striking that this is the 9th crewed flight SpaceX will have flown for NASA, counting Bob and Doug's Demo 2. There's also been two Axiom flights and Jared Isaacman's Inspiration mission for a total of 12.

Sadly Boeing's Starliner has yet to fly even its first crewed demo mission. I'm past the point of Schadenfreude and just feel sad for them. Boeing has lots of good engineers who really put their hearts into this, but it was badly mismanaged by the suits at company headquarters.

Ironically, back when Commercial Crew was just starting, everyone (including me) just assumed that Boeing would be first to space. (They were Boeing for heaven's sake! Experienced, professional aerospace. SpaceX was assumed to just be a bunch of young science fiction nuts in black t-shirts.)

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[Yazata]

Crew 8 has been pushed back to Saturday March 2 at 8:16 PM PST/11:16 PM EST, due to bad downrange weather in areas that the crew capsule might have to descend to in the event of an in-flight abort.

[Yazata]

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/Qe_1qo6teZs

[Yazata]

Crew-8 has arrived at the Space Station

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