Behnken and Hurley will be the first people ever to launch in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule. During that test flight, slated for liftoff from Florida at 4:33 p.m. EDT, the astronauts will make sure all the systems work before NASA certifies the spacecraft to regularly transport its astronauts to the space station.

Even astronauts’ jobs have changed because of coronavirus, Just two months before the mission, during a time when they were learning crucial skills for everyday space-station living, the coronavirus outbreak hit. Without close, interpersonal training, it can be hard to learn those routine tasks, like using — and fixing — the complex piece of machinery that is the station’s toilet.

“You want to be able to do the things you’re going to have to do every day without having to think too much about them,” said Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut who retired in 2018. “Those are the things that are going to waste time if you aren’t pretty familiar going in.” There’s already a lot riding on this mission.

Wednesday’s launch is the first time NASA astronauts will launch to orbit from U.S. soil since the space shuttle was retired in 2011 If the mission is successful, NASA will no longer have to rely solely on Russia to transport U.S. astronauts to space, which has cost the U.S. billions of dollars.

It would also bolster NASA’s bet that relying on commercial companies for “routine” services, like transporting cargo and crew to the space station, will free up the agency to focus on more ambitious endeavors, such as missions to the moon or Mars. “The expectation after Apollo was that we’d be on Mars by 1980,” said Lori Garver, who was NASA’s deputy administrator from 2009 to 2013. “Finally, I think, we’re going to be able to accelerate our progress by opening it up, reducing the cost.”

For SpaceX, a successful launch would achieve the company’s long-standing goal of flying humans to space. It also signifies how much the company has evolved over its 18 years. When SpaceX and Boeing Co. were awarded multibillion contracts in 2014 to develop separate spacecraft to ferry astronauts to the space station, the Elon Musk-led SpaceX was seen as a scrappy upstart. Today, the company has an extensive list of customers ranging from commercial satellite operators to the U.S. military and, of course, NASA.

“They build and operate what I consider to be safe spacecraft,” said former NASA Administrator Charles Bolden Jr., who was initially unimpressed with SpaceX after a visit early in the company’s history. “They have grown in my estimation and my personal esteem, in no small part due to their leadership in the form of Gwynne Shotwell.”
Shotwell, the company’s president and chief operating officer, said earlier this month that there are thousands of SpaceX employees focused on this mission.

“We spent years working on this vehicle,” she told reporters. “There will be a little sense of relief once [Behnken and Hurley are] in orbit. I’ll feel more relief when they get to the station and then, obviously, I will start sleeping again when they’re back safely on the planet.”

In March, as the COVID-19 pandemic continued to spread, NASA had to evaluate the astronauts’ remaining training sessions and decide which had to be done in-person, with as few people as possible, and which could be held remotely.

Learning how to use the space station’s kitchen equipment? Virtual.
Instructors used photos and videos to show Behnken and Hurley how to warm up food or figure out how much water they’d need to rehydrate their food packages.

Practicing space walks? In person.
Behnken suited up in a replica of the spacesuit he’d wear during an actual spacewalk and scaled a life-size space station mock-up that sits in a 40-foot-deep pool at Houston’s Johnson Space Center. The 20 or so experts who usually congregate in a nearby conference room to answer questions or give tips watched from home and relied on video communications, said Megan Levins, chief training officer at Johnson Space Center.

Learning how to use the space station’s toilet? Definitely an in-person lesson.
“It’s hardware you want to make sure you know how to use,” Levins said. The station’s waste management system is high-tech and involves buttons, switches and a number of parts. There are pumps and compressors. There’s a suction function that pulls urine into a funnel and runs it through an air/water separator. Suction is also needed to perform the vital task of pulling solid waste into the toilet. (“In zero gravity, everything floats,” Whitson said.)
That’s why it’s so important to know exactly how to set up the toilet, use it and figure out if there’s a problem.

Usually, astronauts will train side-by-side with an instructor, who uses a mock-up of the toilet to show them how to manipulate its valves. This time, the instructor stood more than six feet away, wore a mask and gave verbal instructions to the astronauts at the mock-up toilet. It’s less efficient to explain everything verbally, Levin said. “It is more difficult but doable.”

NASA has plenty of experience isolating staff to stave off illness. And in the early days of the space program, astronauts were sequestered once they returned home. Famously, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins were quarantined for three weeks after their moon mission in 1969 for fear of lunar contagions.

Nowadays, astronauts typically enter quarantine two weeks before launch and get their temperatures checked every day, said Whitson, who is also a former chief of NASA’s astronaut office. During this period, only a few people like spouses or those critical to the mission are allowed to visit the crew. “We’ve never used the term ‘social distance’ … but that’s exactly what we were doing,” she said. “We have one integrated ventilation system onboard. If one person gets sick, everybody’s going to get sick.”

For Behnken, the additional measures put in place were just an extension of what he was already used to as a veteran astronaut and former chief of NASA’s astronaut office. “We assume pandemic for all crews that are headed toward the space station,” he said. “We just have been doing that longer.” On Earth, particles from a sneeze might travel six feet. But in space, those particles can stay in the air for much longer, though they will eventually get filtered out through the station’s ventilation system, Whitson said. “Everything is going to be in your face,” she said.

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The attempt was a test for the company’s plan to launch satellites into space in the following years and followed five years of development on the 21.3-metre LauncherOne rocket. Flames shoot from a rocket which has just been dropped from beneath the wing of a jumbo jet. Virgin Orbit’s rocket fired briefly after being dropped from beneath the wing of a jumbo jet. There was no immediate info on what went wrong with the rocket, which carried a test satellite, or on whether it had broken up or fallen into the sea.

The failed test provided a ”treasure trove” of data. The modified jumbo jet took off from Mojave Air and Space Port in the desert north of Los Angeles, and flew towards the Channel Islands, in the Pacific Ocean, where the drop occurred. After taking off from Mojave, Cosmic Girl will fly due southwest to our drop point just south of the Channel Islands. Once we reach the drop point, we’ll enter into a loop that we call the “racetrack” as we wait for final go/no-gos. The rocket was planned to fall for a few seconds before the first two stages ignited and propelled it down the coast toward Antarctica Landform before its demonstration payload gets an entry into a low Earth orbit.

Virgin Orbit now had a “treasure trove” of data, according to chief executive Dan Hart. He said, “We accomplished many of the goals we set for ourselves, though not as many as we would have liked. Nevertheless, we took a big step forward today. Our engineers are already pouring through the data. Our next rocket is waiting. We will learn, adjust, and begin preparing for our next test, which is coming up soon.”

Virgin Orbit’s vice-president for special projects Will Pomerantz said during a pre-flight briefing on Saturday that about half of first rocket launches fail. “History is not kind, necessarily, to maiden flights. There had been numerous tests to verify that the system was ready. In the end, the questions are always, has everything been thought about and are there any gaps or seams. Those are the questions you only learn when you commit to a flight.”

A rocket with Launcher One written on the side is attached underneath the wing of a Virgin branded 747.
How long the setback will affect the finances is not now clear. It has six additional rockets still under construction in its factory. A successful launch by Virgin Orbit could have marked a dramatic step in getting back on track after the coronavirus pandemic sent most employees home earlier this year.

The time is just right for small satellite launch market that is why Virgin Orbit is targeting for launching satellites ranging in every size from small toasters to as big as household refrigerators. As told by Mr.Hart, the flight crew is preparing to board the aircraft. Cosmic Girl is piloted by Chief Test Pilot Kelly Latimer, who has been the wind beneath company wings throughout the entire flight test program. Technological advancements have enabled satellites much smaller than traditional payloads to do “real work” in space and for markets ranging from commercial to national security.

While other companies are developing rockets for the small satellite market, and builders of big rockets like SpaceX can carry them into orbit in a ride-share arrangement with large satellites, Virgin Orbit’sOrbit’s air-launch system, based on the aviation industry workhorse 747, is intended to put a satellite up when and where a customer needs it. Virgin can fly to space from any place that can host a 747, which is almost any place, Mr Hart said.

Space company has plenty of work lined up for Virgin Orbit as it has many missions on the books for customers which include US Space Force and Britain’sBritain’s RAF. It is working internationally on plans for launches from the UK & Japan.

Mr Hart provided no specific dollar value for the missions, just called it “hundreds of millions”. Air launch technology dates back decades to X-15 rocket planes in the 1950s and ’60s’60s. For satellites, the method currently in use is Northrop Grumman’sGrumman’s Pegasus rocket program, which had dozen of launches since 1990.

Virgin Galactic has been preparing to begin flights carrying passengers into the lower reaches of space from southern New Mexico. Headquartered in Long Beach, California, Virgin Orbit started as a sister company of Virgin Galactic but has since separated.

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