Storm clouds ground Crew Dragon again—while last year’s sidelined astronauts still wait to climb aboard

New Crew’s Voyage to ISS Delayed 24 Hours After Last-Minute Hold

Early afternoon on Thursday, three astronauts and one cosmonaut who had already waited months while NASA reshuffled plans around Boeing’s Starliner were forced to wait at least one more day. Their SpaceX Crew Dragon, perched atop a Falcon 9 on historic pad 39A, was stopped by a stubborn wall of cumulus clouds that crept over the Kennedy Space Center only seconds before the final push.

Timeline of the Aborted Attempt

• T-67 seconds – Launch director called “Hold, hold, hold” after tracking rule-break weather moving across the complex.
• T-65 seconds – Crew heard Mission Control relay, “Bad luck on weather. A cumulus cloud clipped the pad.”
• Immediately afterward – Commander Zena Cardman replied over comms, “Too bad. But we’ll be ready next time.”

Why the Precise Launch Windows Matter

The Falcon’s trajectory had to be synchronized with the space station’s orbital track, a calculation that opens only a minute-long “sling-shot” window when Earth’s rotational movement aligns perfectly with the ISS flight path. Missing it by even a few seconds would have forced longer burns and more propellant usage, jeopardizing both the rendezvous and the margin of safety.

Who’s Riding in Crew Dragon This Time

• Zena Cardman – geobiologist and mission commander who will serve as overall lead for science and robotics.
• Michael Barratt – physician-astronaut with two prior ISS tours, now filling role of crew medical officer.
• Matthew Dominick – former Navy test pilot stepping into the seat originally reserved for a Starliner crew member.
• Oleg Kononenko – veteran Roscosmos flight engineer, whose seat was reassigned after the joint NASA-Boeing schedule slipped.

Looking Ahead

The same pad, rocket and spacecraft are prepared to try again on Friday, again in a similar narrow window. Forecasters rate the odds of acceptable cloud cover at 70 percent—better than Thursday, when towering cumulus developed faster than models had predicted.

Florida Skies Balk at a Historic Ride

Late-blooming cumulus over Pad 39A scrubs Monday’s crewed departure, resetting the cosmic commute for four astronauts.

Cape Canaveral, 24 Jun—A capricious blanket of clouds surged across Launch Complex 39A inside the final half-hour of countdown this morning, convincing SpaceX to wave off the first attempt at propelling Crew Dragon Freedom skyward. On board were three men and one woman, all ticketed for a six-month tour aboard the International Space Station. No technical glitches marred the day—only Mother Nature’s last-minute stage call.

Next Try: Friday at 11:43 a.m. EDT

• Instant rendezvous profile: Lift-off on Friday would tee up an early-Saturday docking at 3 a.m.
• Forecast caveat: Meteorologists already warn that onshore winds and heightened Atlantic swells may violate abort-weather criteria, shaving the odds of a go to roughly 45 %.

Forgotten Seats and Found Chances

Mission geeks remember that rookie astronaut Jessica Cardman was originally manifested for last autumn’s Crew-9 rotation. A dramatic reshuffle changed everything:

1. NASA needed two empty berths aboard Crew-9 to haul home veteran astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, marooned on the station since their Boeing Starliner test flight last June uncovered propulsion gremlins.
2. Cardman and veteran flyer Stephanie Wilson stepped aside, their seats reassigned to a “rescue” configuration.

“Viewed through a narrow lens, the shuffle felt like a detour,” Cardman reflected Monday. “But spaceflight is a collective art. Every bend in the road simply widens the team I get to learn from.”

What Lies Ahead

If Friday looks equally uncooperative, another instantaneous window opens Saturday morning. Until then, the crew remains in quarantine, the rocket stays vertical, and all eyes stay fixed on a fickle Florida sky.

The New Guard of Crew-11: Final Drills Aboard a Record-Breaking Dragon

The four faces who will ride Crew Dragon Endeavour on its historic sixth flight have just wrapped up grueling simulations inside a glass-walled SpaceX cockpit mock-up. Below, meet every person whose signature will soon ride alongside the Falcon rocket’s fiery trail.

Inside the Capsule: Who Sits Where

• Commander – Zena Cardman: A former microbiologist who hunted extremophiles beneath Antarctic ice. Today her playground is a wall of touchscreen panels.
• Pilot – Mike Fincke: 58, and already a three-time orbital traveler. Fincke previously trained for Boeing’s Starliner, but persistent program delays rerouted his journey—straight into Dragon’s right-hand seat.
• Mission Specialist 1 – Kimiya Yui: A Japanese astronaut who, like Fincke, had his flight plan redrawn when Starliner timelines slipped. He will manage cargo operations and several Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency experiments.
• Mission Specialist 2 – Oleg Platonov: A rookie from Russia gaining his first passport to orbit under a U.S.–Russian seat swap. His assignment safeguards continuous American presence on the ISS—and makes him the seventh cosmonaut to claim a seat aboard Crew Dragon.

Cross-training for the Unexpected

Teams traded months of Soyuz and Starliner manuals for the sleek black shoulder straps of Dragon. Emergency descent drills run at 4 a.m., spacewalk rehearsals hover beneath a thousand-pound water tank, and Russian lessons orbit around English verb tenses in the break room. The payoff?

• Cardman memorizes every circuit-breaker pattern while balancing a hot coffee cup.
• Fincke practices docking burns as his daughter quizzes him with sixth-grade science questions.
• Yui trades jokes with Russian instructors in both languages, proof that accents can harmonize in zero-g.
• Platonov reviews the seat-swap agreement line by line, ensuring the safety clause stays ironclad for future crews.

The Capsule with a Lifetime Mileage Record

Endeavour is no stranger to vacuum, lightning strikes, or ocean splashdowns; this flight pushes her past any other NASA–SpaceX pressure vessel in service. Engineers have replaced heat shield panels, swapped parachute risers, and inserted titanium hinges on the nose cone that previously showed micropits from micrometeorites. The spacecraft now gleams like new metal—and wears its mileage with quiet pride.

Launch Readiness Echoes Across the Cape

Falcon’s nine engines were test-fired last week. Propellant tanks at pad 39A bubbled with liquid oxygen moments after sunrise, while engineers adjusted helium pressure valves by fractions of a heartbeat. In nearby crew quarters, the quartet signed the wall of the hallway where every Dragon flight team has scrawled their initials and a promise to planet Earth.

From console consoles in Hawthorne to snowy Korolyov tracking stations, the mantra remains the same:

“Go Falcon, Go Dragon, Go Crew-11!”

h2Falcon 9 Rumbles Again: SpaceX Readies Sixth Crew Rotation as Kennedy Crawler Carries Dragon to Pad 39A/h2
Over the crisp Florida weekend, Kennedy Space Center’s famed transporter carefully rolled a 230-foot Falcon 9 — topped by the shimmering white Crew Dragon “Endeavour” — out to historic Launch Complex 39A. Forty-eight hours later, Tuesday’s twilight echoed with the roar of nine Merlin engines during a brief yet forceful static-fire, the last major checkpoint before four astronauts strap in for the Crew-11 mission.
h3Quick Recap of Recent Moves/li
Falcon 9 rolled horizontally from Hangar X to Pad 39A on Saturday night.
Ground teams spent Sunday connecting propellant lines and stabilizing the vehicle on the launch mount.
Tuesday’s seven-second engine burn verified thrust-vector control, helium pressurization and fuel-flow dynamics.
h3Certification Path: From Five Flights to Fifteen/lili
Current NASA approval: 5 flights per spacecraft.
Endeavour just cleared its 6th mission after rigorous data review.
Final stretch: only a handful of subsystems need re-testing for the ultimate 15-flight certificate.
Lifting the Five-Flight Ceiling
“Endeavour has shown us exceptional fatigue margins,” said Steven Stich, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager. “We dug into hundreds of inspection photos, thermal-protection tile scans and parachute deployment sequences. The math now says she’s good for a sixth turn.”
Engineers focused on three tricky components:
h5Composite overwrap pressure vessels (COPVs) used for helium storage.
h5Draco maneuvering thrusters exposed to repeated thermal cycles.
h5Heat-shield bolts that endure scorching re-entry plasma.
Stich noted that while most hardware already meets the 15-flight bar, these few items have conservative life limits that will incrementally expand through future post-flight tear-downs and nondestructive testing.
Looking Ahead
Beyond Crew-11 scheduled for next month, SpaceX aims to rotate Crew-12, 13 and 14 aboard ships that could surpass the decade-old life expectancy originally envisioned for Dragon. NASA’s endgame: turn the once capsule into a seasoned commuter craft, cutting both per-seat cost and manufacturing lead time.
For now, the spotlight remains on pad 39A where Endeavour and its Falcon booster stand gleaming beneath the Atlantic sun, one heartbeat away from another climb toward the orbital sunrise.

Catching up with the space station

Rendezvous in Orbit: the Long Chase and the Short Handshake

A quiet 16-hour ballet will carry four new residents to humanity’s outpost on Saturday morning. When the hatch finally swings open, greetings will echo through aluminum walls—and through memories carried across 250 miles of vacuum.

Step by Step: Saturday’s Sky Ballet

The Welcoming Party

When the newcomers float through the entrance, they will be met by
Expedition 10 hosts (arrived March 14)

Soyuz MS-27 crew (docked April 8)

Twelve people will share coffee and handshakes in a place the world never stops orbiting.

A Quiet Reunion at 17,500 mph

Last year, long before any seat reassignment, two packages were slipped into a manifest: birthday surprises for biologist-turned-astronaut Jessica Cardman—cards and keepsakes prepared by her parents. One envelope bears handwriting no longer on Earth: her father, a physicist, sent his last birthday wish days before he passed away late last August.
Cardman’s words to CBS News
“My whole history, the people who brought me to where I am today—feeling that connection to my dad and to my mom on my birthday in space is going to be overwhelming.”
She turns 38 in October. This year, the Earth will spin beneath her while she spins through her parents’ love, weightless.

New Arrivals Fill the Void as Crew-10 Prepares for an Epic Homecoming

Next Wave of Astronauts Set to Step Aboard the Orbital Laboratory

Four fresh fliers will soon glide through the station’s open circular hatch, boosting the Expedition crew tally to eleven. Their welcome committee consists of seven seasoned orbital residents already living 400 km above Earth.

Current Residents You’ll Hear About

• Bottom Deck: Commander Anne McClain (USA) and Navy SEAL-astronaut Jonny Kim (USA).
• Mid-Deck Trio: Kirill Peskov (Russia), mission veteran Sergey Ryzhikov commanding a Soyuz, and rookie flight engineer Alexey Zubritsky (Russia).
• Top Row: Fighter-pilot-turned-astronaut Nichole Ayers (USA) and JAXA’s Takuya Onishi (Japan).

The seven of them have kept the station humming for almost five months, performing everything from gene-sequencing experiments to swapping out aging battery packs.

Passing the Baton – How the Swap Will Unfold

Crew-11’s arrival marks the final act in an elegantly choreographed relay. Crew-10 must depart by 6 August, giving the newcomers time to settle before critical handover meetings begin. The Dragon capsule will undock, fire its thrusters for a precise de-orbit burn, and conclude its marathon 145-day voyage with a gentle splashdown off the Southern California coast.

The Mission Reel – A Few Moments to Remember

• Six hours, one void: McClain and Ayers floated outside to upgrade power channels during a day-lit spacewalk framed by shimmering auroras.
• Science around the clock: From 3-D printing heart tissue to cultivating ultra-pure optical fibers, the crew ran more than 200 separate investigations.
• Unplanned repairs: Rookie Zubritsky replaced a clogged urine-recycling pump—proving that even heroic explorers deal with the plumbing.

Anticipation on Every Side of the Hatch

Going Home – What the Departing Crew Craves Most

• McClain: “Floating is fun, but floating aimlessly on a couch sounds even better.”
• Onishi: “Hot water I can feel—not just micro-droplets—plus hugs from my daughters.”
• Ayers: “Burger. Beach. That’s the plan. I just hope there’s ketchup.”

Their Dragon awaits, parachutes packed and seats freshly aligned. After splashdown, recovery swimmers will hoist the gumdrop-shaped capsule aboard a ship named after an old shuttle—the perfect full-circle moment.

Planning for months in orbit

NASA Reviews Long-Duration Strategy for Future Dragon Flights

Launch plans no longer paint a fixed six-month portrait for the men and women who will soon climb aboard Crew-11. Managers are actively rewriting calendars that—until now—have treated 180 days in orbit as the standard for most U.S. and Russian long-duration crews.

Russia Sets the Eight-Month Trend

• Soyuz MS-27/73S has already stretched its crew calendar to roughly 240 days.
• NASA may elect a similar timeline beginning with Crew-12, which lifts off next year.

The Budget That Changes Everything

The Trump administration’s fiscal 2026 proposal trims NASA funding by nearly 25 percent. The budget language explicitly nudges the agency to:

1. Begin scaling back active work on the International Space Station;
2. Redirect freed resources toward planning crewed missions toward Mars.

Shrinking the Crew, Stretching the Months

To stretch every dollar, leadership is weighing:

• Cutting Dragon occupancy from four to three astronauts, and perhaps later to only two—one American and one Russian.
• Lower headcount equals fewer re-supply Dragon or Cygnus flights, creating immediate annual savings.
• The trade-off: significantly reduced research throughput for experiments on materials, combustion, and human physiology.

No Final Calls Yet

Flight directors have not locked any duration into flight rules. “When we launch, we carry a six-month baseline,” emphasized Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. “We can extend the mission in real time after we see how congressional reconciliation and final appropriations influence the station’s overall manifest.”

A Crew Perspective: “Two Extra Months Would Be a Gift”

For rookie astronaut Zena Cardman, the idea of lingering in orbit is nothing short of extraordinary. “I can’t wait for my first journey into microgravity,” she said. “If the analysis allows an additional 60 days, that’s 60 more sunrises, 60 more experiments, and 60 more moments to appreciate our home planet from above. I would welcome every second.”