NASA’s commercial cargo provider SpaceX is targeting 3:11 a.m. EDT on Friday, May 3, for the launch of its 17th resupply mission to the International Space Station. Packed with more than 5,500 pounds of research, crew supplies and hardware, the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft will launch on a Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
This morning, Robotics Ground Controllers in Mission Control Houston successfully completed an operation to remove a failed Main Bus Switching Unit-3 and replace it with a spare. The MBSU in question had failed on April 29 and reduced the station’s power supply by about 25%. There were no immediate concerns for the crew or the station. The crew had installed a series of jumpers in Node 1 following the failure to reroute power to experiments and hardware and ensure limited impact to continued station operations.
The completion of the robotics work marks the second time an MBSU was swapped out by means other than a spacewalk. Since the successful replacement, the MBSU was powered up and checked out successfully with all station systems back to nominal power configuration, including redundant power to the Canadarm2 robotic arm.
NASA TV Coverage
Follow coverage of the SpaceX CRS-17 mission with prelaunch events on NASA Television and at www.nasa.gov/live.
- 11 a.m. — Prelaunch news conference with representatives from NASA’s International Space Station Program, SpaceX and the U.S. Air Force’s 45th Space Wing
- 2:45 a.m. — Follow the countdown starting at 2:45 a.m. Friday on NASA Television,nasa.gov/live and on NASA’s SpaceX Launch Blog.
Learn more about station activities by following @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.