NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley are set to arrive at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday, one week before the pair’s scheduled launch to the International Space Station on the SpaceX Demo-2 mission.
Tomorrow’s schedule calls for the astronauts to depart from Ellington Field in Houston, Texas, near NASA’s Johnson Space Center, and fly to Kennedy aboard an agency Gulfstream aircraft. They’re expected to arrive at the Launch and Landing Facility at Kennedy at approximately 4 p.m. EDT. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and Center Director Bob Cabana will greet the crew, followed by a news conference at the runway. These events will be broadcast live on NASA Television and online at www.nasa.gov/live.
Behnken and Hurley will fly to the station aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft launched by a Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy’s historic Launch Complex 39A. The Demo-2 mission will serve as an end-to-end flight test to validate the SpaceX crew transportation system, from launch to docking to splashdown. It is the final flight test for the system to be certified for regular crew flights to the station as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. Liftoff is slated for Wednesday, May 27 at 4:33 p.m. EDT.