Complications caused by a piece of space junk on Thursday have led to the rescheduling of the launch of four astronauts to the International Space Station to early Saturday morning.
If all goes as planned, the SpaceX Falcon rocket will carry a crew representing four different nations to replace the current residents of the International Space Station (ISS), who have completed their six-month tour of duty, NBC 5 DFW reported.
NASA and SpaceX officials decided to postpone the launch after the ISS had to maneuver to avoid colliding with space debris. The rogue material reportedly originated from China’s 2007 anti-satellite missile test.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, a Chinese rocket carrying spy satellites disintegrated over Texas last spring after being launched in June 2022. The rocket entered the atmosphere in an uncontrolled re-entry above West Texas near Marathon at 17,000 miles per hour before burning up.
Space junk is an ongoing issue, with NASA tracking upwards of 27,000 pieces of debris traveling at extremely high speeds of roughly 15,700 miles per hour. Such debris poses a significant threat to spaceflight, which has picked up in frequency in light of a new space race to the Moon, as covered by The Dallas Express.
Nations are scrambling to explore the lunar south pole in hopes of finding water and establishing a long-term base for conducting missions into deep space. The research conducted on the ISS is crucial to such endeavors.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, the crew currently manning the ISS — SpaceX Crew-6 — was brought there in March by a Dragon spacecraft propelled by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The new team, SpaceX Crew-7, is being led by Commander Jasmin Moghbeli of NASA. Danish Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency will act as pilot. Satoshi Furukawa of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Russian Konstantin Borisov of Roscosmos will serve as mission specialists. They will be conducting a microgravity research mission.
Favorable weather conditions are anticipated for the rescheduled launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 3:27 a.m. CT.
