On Monday, Feb. 27, NASA and SpaceX attempted to launch Crew-6, but the system that ignites the Falcon 9 rocket’s Merlin main engines had an issue, which caused the teams to halt the launch and work on troubleshooting. During the agency’s broadcast, NASA astronaut Raja Chari, who flew the Crew-3 mission in November 2021, explained that the problem was narrowed down to oxidation of the lines that transport TEA-TEB, or triethylaluminium and triethylborane, to the pad.
When TEA-TEB comes into contact with air, it ignites and allows the Merlin engines to produce up to 1.7 million pounds of thrust.
Bowen, a former space shuttle astronaut, expressed gratitude for the call to scrub the other night just before Thursday’s liftoff. He said that it was a valuable learning experience for the crew and teams involved.
Looking ahead, the Space Coast’s next high-profile mission will be conducted by a newcomer, Relativity Space. They are targeting no earlier than 1 p.m. on Wednesday, March 8, for the first launch of their Terran rocket from Launch Complex 16 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Despite being approximately half the height of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V, Terran 1 stands at 110 feet tall and is mostly 3D printed, accounting for 85% of its mass. The use of 3D printing technology enables Relativity to construct rockets in weeks rather than months or years, with fewer parts. The company prints its rockets and engines in California before transporting them by truck to the Cape.
Crew-6 comprises of a truly international team of four astronauts:
- Stephen Bowen (commander) from Cohasset, Massachusetts, is a veteran of three space shuttle flights and helped construct the International Space Station over two decades ago. He is a retired Navy captain and became the first submarine officer selected for astronaut duty in 2020.
- Warren “Woody” Hoburg (pilot) from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is a commercial pilot and was an aeronautics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when he was selected for NASA’s astronaut class in 2017. Crew-6 marks his first spaceflight and he is also a part of NASA.
- Sultan Alneyadi, a mission specialist, is the first astronaut from the United Arab Emirates to fly on Dragon. Axiom Space, a private company that partners with NASA to offer trips to the International Space Station to non-NASA organizations, organized his flight. He’s flying the first long-duration International Space Station mission for any astronaut from an Arab nation. Before becoming an astronaut, he served as a communications engineer in the UAE armed forces.
- Andrey Fedyaev (mission specialist), formerly a major in the Russian air force, was selected as a cosmonaut in 2012. Crew-6 is his first mission, and he’s the second cosmonaut to fly on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule as part of a swap partnership between NASA and Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency.
