Nasa’s Crew-4 mission to launch on SpaceX rocket on 23 April

Nasa’s fourth commercial crew mission to the International Space Station will now launch on 23 April

Falcon 9 liquid oxygen loading (Nasa)

Crew-4, Nasa’s fourth Commercial Crew mission to the International Space Station, will lift off from Kennedy Space Center on the morning of 23 April.

Liftoff for Crew-4 is currently scheduled for no earlier than 5.26am Eastern time on 23 April, and live coverage of the launch and pre-launch activities will be streamed on Nasa’s website. The SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft — given the name Freedom — will dock with the ISS about a day later, at 6am Eastern on Sunday 24 April.

The Crew-4 mission includes three Nasa astronauts — mission commander Kjell Lindgren, mission pilot Bob Hines, and mission specialist Jessica Watkins — and one European Space Agency astronaut, mission specialist Samantha Cristoforetti. The crew are expected to stay on the ISS for about six months, returning to Earth sometime in the fall of 2022.

The astronauts of Nasa’s Crew-4 mission to the ISS, Jessica Watkins, Robert hines, Kjell Lindgren and ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti (Nasa)

As the mission’s name implies, Crew-4 is the fourth mission in Nasa’s Commercial Crew program, which contracts with private launch providers to ferry astronauts and cargo to and from the ISS.

But although Nasa awarded contracts to both SpaceX and Boeing, problems during a 2019 orbital flight test of the Boeing Starliner vehicle have meant SpaceX has been the only commercial provider flying for Nasa since 2020.

The astronauts of the Nasa Crew-3 mission, which launched to the ISS in November, are expected to return to Earth later in April, although Nasa has not yet set an official return date.

The four crew members of Axiom-1, the first all-private mission to the ISS, however, will return to Earth on 20 April. The private astronauts also took a Crew Dragon to space, and will return in the same vehicle to splashdown off the Florida coast.