(Kennedy Space Center) NASA and SpaceX announced today that they are targeting Monday, August 21 at 5:23 am EDT to launch the Crew-7 mission to the International Space Station. The launch was initially scheduled for late July but was shifted to no earlier than August 17 in order to allow for additional launch pad processing at SpaceX’s LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center.
NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli will command the mission, European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Andreas Mogensen from Denmark, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa and Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov will be aboard and will travel to ISS for a planned 180-day mission aboard the orbiting international outpost. Borisov is part of the Soyuz-Dragon crew swap system of keeping at least one NASA astronaut and one Roscosmos cosmonaut on each of the crew rotation missions. The agreement ensures both countries have a presence on the station, and the ability to maintain their separate systems if either Soyuz or commercial crew vehicles are grounded for an extended period.
Crew-7 is the seventh rotational mission to the International Space Station for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program and will be SpaceX’s tenth crewed mission. This mission will be SpaceX’s 10th crewed launch and will be the first launch of the booster used for the mission. Once testing is completed, the rocket will be mated to the Crew Dragon capsule Endurance, which has previously flown the Crew-3 and Crew-5 missions to ISS.
SpaceX and NASA announced that the booster and other flight hardware are in Florida already, and are going through pre-launch preparation and testing leading up to the planned August 21st liftoff.
