NASA, SpaceX Crew-8 mission to launch Saturday night to space station

Feb. 29 (UPI) -- The three American astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut who comprise NASA's next crewed mission to the International Space Station are scheduled to lift off Saturday night from Florida.

Crew-8 will use the SpaceX Dragon capsule Endeavour atop one of the company's Falcon 9 rockets to lift off from Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center and head northeast.

The mission is scheduled to lift off at 11:16 p.m. after those involved performed a full rehearsal Monday night and early Tuesday morning. The targeted docking time is about 2:10 p.m. Sunday, NASA said.

The Space Force 45th Weather Squadron said conditions early Friday morning -- the originally scheduled launch time -- in offshore areas along the flight track of the Dragon spacecraft would not be acceptable. "High wind and waves along the eastern seaboard have been observed and are forecast to continue through Saturday morning," NASA said.

"This mission to the ISS really has a lot of exciting science that they're doing. There are some 200 science experiments, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during a news conference Wednesday.

"A lot of the stuff dreamed of in the old days is just coming to fruition: the use of protein crystal growth, the medical research into the use of and growing stem cells in microgravity," Nelson said.

This will mark the fifth mission for the Dragon capsule Endeavour, the most of any in the SpaceX fleet. The vehicle was also used to carry SpaceX's first manned space flight, Demo-2, and ferried astronauts to the space station in 2020.

SpaceX and NASA are working to recertify the spacecraft for an additional 15 crewed flights.

NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick will command Friday's mission, which is expected to last about six months.

The active duty U.S. Navy pilot landed Sunday afternoon in Florida, alongside Crew-8 pilot Michael Barratt, NASA mission specialist Jeanette Epps and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, also a mission specialist.

Once aboard the space station, the crew will perform a variety of operational tasks and research activities.

Dominick, from Wheat Ridge, Colo., became a NASA astronaut in 2017 after specializing in catapult takeoffs and landings aboard aircraft carriers.

"Coming out here to the Cape, every time, I'm a kid in a candy store," the U.S. Navy test pilot told reporters Sunday.

"It's an incredible time to be involved in spaceflight. Who would've thought five or six years ago that this would be the fifth flight of Endeavour that we get to go on?

"Who would've thought five or six years ago that the competition for launch or the constraint to launch would be a launch pad? We delayed our launch a few days because there's stiff competition to get out there to 39A. It's not a rocket constraint, it's a pad constraint."

Barratt will return to the space station for the third time, after serving as the flight engineer for Expeditions 19 and 20 and performing two spacewalks.

The resident of Camas, Wash., has a medical degree from Northwestern University in Chicago and spent nine years as a NASA flight surgeon and project physician before becoming an astronaut in 2000.

Epps will make her first trip to the space station. Born in Syracuse, N.Y., she worked for the Central Intelligence Agency before being chosen in 2009 to become an astronaut.

NASA reassigned Epps to the current mission after she spent time with the agency's Boeing Starliner-1 mission, which is not scheduled to launch until late April at the earliest.

Grebenkin also will make his first trip to the space station, after graduating from Moscow Technical University of Communications with a degree in radio communications, broadcasting and television.

Before that, he served in technical and operational units of the Russian Air Force, after focusing on repairing aircraft radio navigation systems in school.