Particle.news
Download on the App Store

FAA Lifts Falcon 9 Pause, Clearing Way for Crew-12 Launch Wednesday

Astronaut Jessica Meir plans to take her three-year-old daughter's plush rabbit to the ISS.

Overview

  • NASA says Crew-12Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, Sophie Adenot and Andrej Fedjaew—is scheduled to launch Wednesday from Cape Canaveral on a SpaceX Falcon 9.
  • The FAA and NASA ended a brief grounding after investigating a recent second-stage anomaly and accepting SpaceX’s preventive measures, allowing crewed missions to proceed.
  • A Falcon 9 flew a Starlink mission over the weekend, marking the vehicle’s return to flight ahead of the crew launch.
  • The ISS is currently staffed by U.S. astronaut Chris Williams and Russian cosmonauts Sergej Kud-Swertschkow and Sergej Mikajew as they await Crew-12’s arrival.
  • Crew-11 left early in January for undisclosed medical reasons, and NASA will livestream Wednesday’s launch and Thursday’s docking.