The launch of the Axiom 4 mission with Polish astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski to the International Space Station (ISS) is planned for Wednesday, June 25, at 8:31 a.m. Polish time, the US space agency NASA announced.
The Falcon 9 rocket and the Dragon capsule that will take astronauts to the ISS are currently scheduled to lift off at 2:31 a.m. local time. The launch will take place from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The astronauts are scheduled to reach the ISS at around 1 p.m. Polish time on Thursday.
This is yet another planned launch for the long-awaited mission after it was repeatedly postponed. The reason for the flight being postponed for almost two weeks was a leak in the Russian service module Zvezda on the ISS. NASA reported that after repairs, the falling pressure in the station had stabilized, but in recent days it was conducting further analyses.
The mission, which is to depart from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is Axiom Space's fourth commercial flight to the ISS. The astronauts – former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson (commander), pilot Shubhanshu Shukla from India, and scientific specialists Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski and Tibor Kapu from Hungary – will spend up to 14 days on the ISS, performing about 60 scientific experiments, including 13 prepared by Polish scientists. They will fly to the station aboard the Crew Dragon capsule – the last one created by SpaceX – for which this will be the first flight into space.
Uznański-Wiśniewski will be the first Polish astronaut on the International Space Station.
From Washington Oskar Górzyński (PAP)
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