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SpaceX’s upcoming crewed mission to the International Space Station (ISS), known as Crew-7, has been given the green light. The company and NASA conducted a flight readiness review (FRR) for the mission, which aims to send four astronauts to the ISS aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. The FRR went smoothly and the mission remains on track for liftoff at the end of this week from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Crew-7 is scheduled to launch on Friday at 3:49 am Eastern Time. If all goes according to plan, the crew will arrive at the ISS on Saturday. Backup launch opportunities are also available on Saturday and Sunday in case of technical issues or unfavorable weather conditions.

The crew for Crew-7 is comprised of four astronauts from different nations, including NASA’s Jasmin Moghbeli as the commander, Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency as the pilot, and Konstantin Borisov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos and Japan’s Satoshi Furukawa as mission specialists.

Preparations for liftoff are underway at Kennedy Space Center, with the Falcon 9 rocket and the Crew Dragon spacecraft, named Endurance, in good condition. The spacecraft has successfully completed two crewed missions to the ISS in the past.

During the FRR, teams from NASA and SpaceX addressed certain issues, including corrosion in valves found in other Dragon capsules. The corrosion, caused by acid formation when oxidizer vapors mixed with moisture, was remediated by swapping out valves on the Crew Dragon spacecraft.

Crew-7 will replace the crew from the previous SpaceX mission, Crew-6, when they return to Earth. The Crew-6 splashdown is dependent on favorable weather conditions.

Overall, the preparations for the Crew-7 mission are progressing smoothly, and if everything goes as planned, the astronauts will launch into space later this week to begin their mission on the ISS.

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