July 26 (UPI) — An international crew of four is readying for Thursday’s planned launch of a NASA mission to the International Space Station after arriving at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.<\/p>\n
Astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke<\/a>, Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency specialist Kimiya Yui and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov will travel from<\/a> Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A to the ISS while aboard the SpaceX<\/a> Crew Dragon Endeavour.\n<\/p>\n Cardman is the mission’s leader. The crew landed at Space Florida’s Launch and Landing Facility at 1:12 EDT after leaving from Houston on Saturday morning.<\/p>\n “We are absolutely joyed to be here at Kennedy Space Center,” Cardman said upon the crew’s landing.<\/p>\n “This is the first moment when it’s really starting to feel real,” she said. “This is the beginning of a week when things will feel progressively more and more real as we approach our launch.”<\/p>\n Mission pilot Fincke said the mission gives him another chance to fly aboard a spacecraft named Endeavour.<\/p>\n “One of the last times I landed at the [Florida launch and landing facility] was on space shuttle Endeavour,” Fincke told media.\n<\/p>\n “Now we get to go on another endeavor – a Dragon Endeavour,” he said.<\/p>\n The Endeavour name honors the HMS Endeavour<\/a>, which British Capt. James Cook<\/a> used to explore and chart the South Pacific from 1768 to 1771.<\/p>\n A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will deliver the Endeavor into low Earth orbit, which will make the Crew Dragon spacecraft the most flown among SpaceX’s fleet.<\/p>\n Thursday’s launch is scheduled at 12:09 p.m. EDT and would enable the Endeavor to dock at the ISS on Aug. 2 if the launch occurs as planned.<\/p>\n The four crew members will join Expedition 73, which already is at the ISS.<\/p>\n An Expedition 74 crew is scheduled to replace the Expedition 73 crew while the Crew 11 team is at the ISS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"July 26 (UPI) — An international crew of four is readying for Thursday’s planned launch of a NASA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[64,63,99,19870,24337,128,285,5437,105],"class_list":["post-24672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-james-cook","tag-mike-fincke","tag-science","tag-space","tag-spacex","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}