Florida: The two astronauts who will test drive SpaceX's brand new rocketship are set to end a nine-year drought for NASA when they blast into orbit next week from Florida's Kennedy Space Center.
NASA and SpaceX administrators said at a briefing on Friday that the launch is good to go as planned after a clean review.
"There's quite a bit of it between now and launch, but we are ready to launch on Wednesday, May 27th at 4:33 p.m.," said NASA Associate Administrator Steve Jurczyk.
Kirk Shireman, NASA's International Space Station Program Manager, says three astronauts currently aboard the International Space Station are looking forward to the arrival of NASA's Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken.
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"Those guys are very focused, very excited, and are preparing for having Bob and Doug arrive on orbit," he said.
Retired Marine Col. Doug Hurley will be in charge of launch and landing, a fitting assignment for the pilot of NASA's last space shuttle flight.
Air Force Col. Bob Behnken, a mechanical engineer with six spacewalks on his resume, will oversee rendezvous and docking at the International Space Station.
Hurley and Behnken are NASA's first test pilot crew in decades.
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Their flight will mark the return of astronaut launches to the U.S., the first by a private company.
While SpaceX's Dragon crew capsule and its escape system have already been demonstrated in flight -- with mannequins -- there are no guarantees. In spaceflight, there never are.
Benji Reed, SpaceX director of crew mission management, says the team is watching closely over conditions from the launch site in Florida to the northern Atlantic.
"We're monitoring the weather along the ascent track ... all the way up the eastern seaboard of the of North America, United States and Canada and over basically to Ireland," he said.
Reed added that conditions have to be even better than required for uncrewed launches.
"We're looking at wave velocity and wave height because we need to make sure that if the crew had to come down in a launch escape scenario, that they would come down in a sea state that would keep them safe and that the rescue forces would be able to come and get them," he said.
Hurley and Behnken -- both two-time space shuttle fliers -- were among four astronauts chosen in 2015 for NASA's commercial crew program.
All four trained on both SpaceX and Boeing's crew capsules before NASA assigned Hurley and Behnken to Elon Musk's SpaceX, which soon surged ahead of Boeing in the race to fly first.
(AP)
