Who’s ready for another space launch? The next cohort of astronauts is making their way to the International Space Station on Thursday, and the event will be live-streamed in more places than usual. SpaceX is sending up Crew-11 to relieve Crew-10. You may remember Crew-10 as being the crew that relieved Crew-9, which had two stowaways on board who had been stuck in space for months.
The launch is scheduled for Thursday at 12:09 p.m. EST from Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39A, barring any last-minute delays due to the weather or other factors.
NASA has been preparing for the launch for days, getting SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket into place and conducting a launch rehearsal, which includes a “static fire.” That’s when NASA burns the rockets to make sure they’re structurally sound, but keeps them pinned to the ground so they don’t fly away. Pre-flight coverage begins on NASA’s Kennedy Space Center social media pages.
Crew-11 will send US astronauts Zena Cardman, Mike Fincke and Kimiya Yui up to space, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov.
Once launched, the crew will head into Earth’s orbit, where they will remain for 39 hours. This is longer than is typical, as most ISS launches are in orbit for only less than 24 hours. The reason is so the crew can line up with the ISS’ Harmony module precisely, allowing for a smoother docking. Once successfully onboard, the crew will spend a week with Crew-10 before the latter returns to Earth.
How do I stream the SpaceX Crew-11 launch?
You’re in luck there, because it’s streaming in quite a few places. You can find the stream on NASA’s social media channels as well as NASA Plus. NASA Plus is also on Amazon’s Prime Video as part of its FAST selection of channels, so you can watch it there too. Other options include NASA TV’s YouTube channel and SpaceX’s social media accounts.
NASA also recently reached a deal with Netflix to include NASA Plus programming on the streaming giant. So the Crew-11 launch will be available on Netflix as well if you prefer to go that route. The first launch live streamed on Netflix was the Progress 92 cargo mission that launched on July 3.
If you’re interested, here are the rest of the major spaceflights scheduled for this year.
