08/01/2020 - 10:02
- Clarín.com
- International
- U.S
The first U.S. astronauts to arrive at the International Space Station (ISS) on a spacecraft from their country in nearly a decade could be prevented from returning home this weekend, as planned, due to Hurricane Isaias, the Friday NASA.
Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley took off from Cape Canaveral on May 30 aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon and were slated to land on the Florida coast on Sunday afternoon.
For now, the decoupling remains scheduled for 19:34 (23:34 GMT) on Saturday, and the landing at sea for 14:42 (18:42 GMT) on Sunday.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the connected Crew Dragon spacecraft takes off from launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center on May 30, 2020 in Cape Canaveral, Florida.Joe Raedle / Getty Images / AFP
But NASA said it was closely following the evolution of Category One hurricane Isaias that hit the Bahamas on Friday and is headed for Florida.
"We do not control the weather and we know we can stay here longer, there is more food and the space station program foresees more work than we can do," Behnken told reporters.
Possible landing sites are located in the Gulf of Mexico and along the Atlantic coast of Florida.
This mission is the first carried out by a manned spacecraft launched from the US soil since 2011, when the space shuttle program ended.
It is also the first time that a private company has taken astronauts to the ISS.
The United States paid SpaceX and aerospace giant Boeing a total of about $ 7 billion for "space taxi" contracts.
But the Boeing program failed after a failed test late last year, making SpaceX a clear favorite to win the contracts.
For the past nine years, American astronauts traveled to the ISS on Russian Soyuz rockets. Washington paid about $ 80 million for each of them.
The crew members said they were eager to return home after two months.
"My son is six years old and I can see from the videos I receive and from talking to him on the phone that it has changed a lot," Behnken said.
With information from AFP