WASHINGTON – NASA and SpaceX held a joint teleconference Friday to discuss the upcoming Crew-4 mission to the International Space Station.
Crew-4 will be the fourth crew rotation mission with a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, and the company’s fifth ever crewed flight to the ISS with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, according to a news release. The capsule is currently set to launch atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center on April 15, NASA said.
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The crew itself is comprised of NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins, Robert Hines and Kjell Lindgreen, along with European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti. Watkins and Cristoforetti will serve as Crew-4 mission specialists, Hines as pilot and Lindgreen as commander.
For Friday’s news briefing, SpaceX Vice President of Build and Flight Reliability William Gerstenmaier was joined by Kathryn Lueders, associate administrator of NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, Steve Stich, manager of the NASA Commercial Crew Program, and Joel Montalbano, manager of the agency’s International Space Station Program.
The officials were asked multiple questions relating to parachute issues experienced during the last two capsule flights. One of the four main parachutes on the capsules in question were noticeably slow to inflate on both occasions, prompting an investigation.
Listen to the teleconference with the video player below: