The Space Coast has a busy week with two SpaceX launches scheduled, including the crewed Axiom-2 flight to the International Space Station.

Also on tap is a hot fire test of United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket gearing up for its first flight.

The ULA hot fire follows a successful tanking test last Friday of the rocket that will be used on the Certification-1 mission. It will send up the primary payload of Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander that’s headed to the moon as well as the first two test satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper internet constellation into low-Earth orbit.

“Will need to adjust a handful of parameters and set points for a reliable FRF [Flight Readiness Firing] count. (Which is is the purpose of this run),” ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno posted Monday to Twitter. “Rolling back to the [Vertical Integration Facility] today to work on that. FRF in a few days or so.”

At SLC-41, cryogenic propellant loading operations began on both the #VulcanRocket booster stage and Centaur V upper stage. We will load more than a million pounds of liquid methane, liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen into the rocket to simulate a launch day. #CountdowntoVulcan pic.twitter.com/gVaMKCgGHf

— ULA (@ulalaunch) May 12, 2023

 

The rocket missed a recent target launch date of May 4 because of an explosion at the company’s test stand at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. That didn’t involve the hardware that’s safe here in Florida, but a test article of the upper Centaur stage exploring the limits of what the rocket might see on launch.

While damage wasn’t too drastic, ULA has to complete the investigation into the fireball before it will let Vulcan fly from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

ULA has moved forward with the test at Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 41 so it can be set to fly. Bruno this month said June or July was the expected launch target.

It’s the first of two required flights ULA will need to complete before a busy lineup of launches planned for the next-generation rocket for the Department of Defense.

SpaceX, which has already launched 22 times from the Space Coast, is set to fly two more launches here this week.

First up is another overnight Starlink flight as early as Friday after midnight from Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40. Space Launch Delta 45’s weather squadron puts launch window from midnight-3:33 a.m. The forecast calls for only 40% chance of good conditions at the opening of the window, but improving to 60% chance by the end of the window. A 24-hour delay sees 60% sliding to 70% chance for good conditions.

Then on Sunday, SpaceX looks to fly from Kennedy Space Center on what would be only the second crewed flight of the year from the U.S.

A Falcon 9 rocket on the Ax-2 mission for Axiom Space looks to send four crew to the ISS from KSC’s Launch Pad 39-A with liftoff targeting 5:37 p.m. The rocket’s first stage will be doing something new for a crewed flight with a landing attempt back at Canaveral’s Landing Zone 1, so the Space Coast can expect to hear the sonic boom from the return.

A backup opportunity is available Monday, buy if issues arise, the Ax-2 mission could have to wait until late summer as other launches are in the works to the ISS as well as missions such as a Falcon Heavy launch for the Space Force that would require the KSC launch pad.

“The space station is an incredibly busy, busy place today with crew, cargo flights, lots of science,” said Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator over the Space Operations Mission Directorate. “The schedule is really tight with all the missions launching from different parts of the world, and it was a real challenge for the team to find this two-day window for the [Private Astronaut Mission].”

This is the second flight to the ISS for commercial company Axiom Space following Ax-1 in 2022. The quartet will be flying in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Freedom making its second trip to space.

“We’ve got the hardware ready to go fly. The Dragon vehicle’s over in the hangar waiting to be attached to the rocket. The rocket is ready to go fly. The pad is ready,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, formerly with NASA, but now a vice president with SpaceX. “We have dry dress and static fire ahead of us on Friday. …  We’ve got the crew fully trained. They’re ready to go fly the Dragon capsule to the station and they’re also ready for their return back to Earth. We’re all ready.”

The crew will be commanded by former NASA astronaut, but now Axiom Space’s Director of Human Spaceflight Peggy Whitson, who holds the American record for time in space. The rest of the crew are aviator John Shoffner as pilot and two mission specialist seats paid for by the Saudi Space Commission, Rayyanah Barnawi and Ali AlQarni.

Does the word quarantine ring a bell? #Ax2 Crew is now in a two-week quarantine period to ensure they remain healthy for launch and do not carry any harmful pathogens to the @Space_Station. pic.twitter.com/cj5d2UuBGp

— Axiom Space (@Axiom_Space) May 9, 2023

Whitson will become the first female commander of a commercial space mission while Barnawi will become the first Saudi woman in space. It will also be the first time Saudi astronauts will have visited the ISS.

Their presence marks a change from Ax-1 that featured only private customers as Axiom Space looks to government astronaut programs from countries that don’t have easy access to the ISS to purchase more of the seats on future missions.

“Early in the program you know it wasn’t clear what the balance would be between private individuals and government astronauts since nothing like this had ever been done before,” said Axiom Space’s chief of mission integration and operations Derek Hassmann.. “But it’s become clear to us that the government astronaut market is key. And we’re pursuing that actively.”

Ax-2 would be SpaceX’s 10th flight of a Crew Dragon with humans on board that began with NASA’s Demo-2 flight in May 2020. It has since flown up six operational crew missions to the ISS including the only other crewed flight of 2023, Crew-6, which launched from KSC on March 2.

The four members of that flight remain on board the ISS awaiting the arrival of Ax-2 for what is planned to be an eight-day stay beginning with docking at 9:30 a.m. Monday if Sunday’s launch goes off as planned.

The four members of Ax-2 would bring to 38 the number of humans taken to space by SpaceX in its fleet of Crew Dragon spacecraft with three more human spaceflights by the company possible before the end of the year.

“We see crew missions as a really special mission for us,” Gerstenmaier said. “They are very different than the typical missions we fly. We learn a lot from each flight we fly on Falcon. We take those lessons to heart. We apply those back in, and it ends up with a more reliable vehicle to go take crews, our most precious cargo, to space.”