Soyuz MS-23 on Track for Thursday, Crew-6 Delayed to Monday

NASA and SpaceX decided today to delay the launch of the next Crew Dragon for one day as they continue work on a number of items. The February 26 launch is now set for February 27 at 1:45 am ET. At the same time, NASA confirmed its Russian counterpart, Roscosmos, will launch the uncrewed Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft on Thursday evening.

During a media teleconference this evening following the Flight Readiness Review, NASA Commercial Crew Program Manager Steve Stich said launch of Crew-6 on Crew Dragon Endeavour will wait another day because “we’re a little bit behind” getting Crew Dragon and the Falcon 9 rocket ready.

The four-man crew arrived at Kennedy Space Center today enthusiatically looking forward to launch. This is the fourth trip to space for Crew-6 commander Steve Bowen, but his first long-duration mission. He flew to the ISS on the space shuttle in 2008, 2010 and 2011, but only for short visits. His three crewmates are all on their first flights: NASA astronaut Woody Hoburg, Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, and United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi.

Alneyadi is the second UAE astronaut on the ISS, but the first on a long-duration mission. His colleague Hazzaa AlMansoori made a short visit on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 2019.

Stich listed several outstanding items that remain before the system is cleared for launch, but no showstoppers. If necessary they can launch on February 28, March 2, 3 or 4 instead.

Once Crew-6 is aboard, Crew-5 will return home after a roughly 5-day handover period. Crew-5 is composed of NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, JAXA astronaut Koichi Wakata, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina.

First, however, Roscosmos will send the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft to ISS as a replacement for the damaged Soyuz MS-22. No one will be aboard. Soyuz MS-22 suffered a coolant leak in December and is not considered safe to return its crew to Earth except in an emergency.

Russia’s Progress MS-21 cargo spacecraft suffered a similar leak last week, but Roscosmos is confident Soyuz MS-23 does not have a common design or manufacturing defect.

Roscosmos announced the Soyuz MS-23 launch date on Saturday, but NASA only confirmed it this evening. NASA TV coverage of the 7:24 pm February 23 Eastern Standard Time launch (3:24 am February 24 Moscow Time) begins at 7:00 pm.