When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.Backdropped by a faint moon and bright blue sky, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon “Freedom” is mounted atop a Falcon 9 rocket poised to launch four astronauts to the International Space Station on the Crew-12 mission from Space Launch Complex-40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. | Credit: SpaceXNASA and SpaceX are ready to send a new crew to the International Space Station (ISS) as soon as this week, pending the weather.On Monday (Feb. 9), mission managers adjusted their target date for the Crew-12 launch by at least a day due to a forecast of poor weather conditions on Wednesday (Feb. 11). A launch on Thursday (Feb. 12), if cleared, would be at 5:38 a.m. EDT (1038 GMT) from Space Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.AdvertisementAdvertisementMission managers considered the forecast for both the Space Coast and the Eastern seaboard, where if a problem occurred during the launch, NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Sophie Adenot and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev of the Russian federal space corporation Roscosmos could splash down safely.A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket topped with the Crew Dragon capsule “Freedom” stands poised on Space Launch Complex-40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. | Credit: SpaceX”When we did that, we could see high winds along a lot of that track, up to 24 to 28 knots [27.6 to 32.2 mph], especially in what we would consider our higher-risk areas, the staging area,” Steve Stich, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager, said Monday during a press briefing at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC), which is next door to the Space Force station. “There’s a low-pressure system that’s moving in and setting over that staging area, and it’s driving those winds up.”The forecast for Thursday, while slightly better, will be reassessed on Tuesday (Feb. 10), so the launch date could change again, said Stich.The teams are working only one technical issue, a problem communicating between the Crew Dragon capsule “Freedom” and launch support team members.AdvertisementAdvertisement”Otherwise, I would say the vehicles are ready, the crew’s ready, the ground systems are ready, and we just have to watch the weather,” Stich said. “We’ll go ahead and launch when we’re ready.”Crew-12 will bring the ISS back up to its normal complement of seven astronauts. The orbiting lab has been operating with a skeleton crew of three since mid-January, when the Crew-11 mission departed a month early in the first-ever medical evacuation from the ISS.A busy rangePossibly further complicating matters are the other launches and tests pending at the Cape.On Kennedy’s launch pad 39B, NASA engineers are continuing to troubleshoot the hydrogen leak and other issues seen during a “wet dress rehearsal” (WDR) for the Space Launch System rocket and Artemis 2 moon mission. The program is working towards conducting another WDR before setting a new Artemis 2 launch date in early March.AdvertisementAdvertisement”We don’t see conflicts this week, but we continue to talk to th …
