All about Space X’s Crew 3 mission

Space X is set to launch four astronauts to the International Space Station on Wednesday night. The Crew-3 mission, after a series of delays will launch at 9:03 pm local time (0203 GMT Thursday) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Crew-3’s Raja Chari, Kayla Barron and Tom Marshburn of the United States and Matthias Maurer of Germany are a part of the crew and will aboard a Crew Dragon capsule fixed to a Falcon 9 rocket. 

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The launch follows the Crew-2 mission that splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday night.

The spaceship, called Endurance, will dock with the ISS at 7:10 PM Thursday (0010 GMT Friday), with streaming provided by NASA.

The  launch to the International Space Station was earlier planned for October 31 but was postponed, due to unfavourable weather, to November 3 and then delayed to November 6.

Crew-3 is part of NASA’s multibillion-dollar partnership with SpaceX that it signed after ending the Space Shuttle program in 2011 and aims to restore US capacity to carry out human spaceflight.

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This is the third crew rotation mission with astronauts on the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft and the fourth flight with astronauts, including the Demo-2 test flight, as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Programme. The four will spend six months on the orbital outpost and conduct research.