The launch of the Axiom 4 mission with Polish astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski to the International Space Station (ISS) is scheduled for Wednesday at 8:31 a.m. Polish time, the American space agency NASA announced on Monday.
The liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket with the Dragon capsule, which will carry the astronauts to the ISS, is currently planned for 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 expected to arrive at the ISS around 1:00 p.m. Polish time on Thursday.
Wednesday’s date is yet another planned launch attempt for the long-anticipated mission, which has been postponed multiple times. The delays over the past two weeks were due to a leak in the Russian Zvezda service module on the ISS. NASA reported that after repairs, the station’s internal pressure stabilized, though further analyses have been ongoing in recent days.
The mission, launching from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is the fourth commercial flight to the ISS organized by Axiom Space. The crew consists of former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson (commander), pilot Shubhanshu Shukla from India, and science specialists Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski and Tibor Kapu from Hungary. They will spend up to 14 days aboard the ISS, conducting around 60 scientific experiments, including 13 developed by Polish researchers. The crew will travel aboard the Crew Dragon capsule – the latest spacecraft built by SpaceX – which will be making its first flight into space.
Uznański-Wiśniewski will be the first Polish astronaut to visit the International Space Station.
Source:
