Shifting focus from the Luna-25 lunar lander incident, Russia embarked on a new journey by launching a Progress cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday, just two and a half days ahead of the scheduled takeoff of a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule from Florida. The Crew Dragon is set to transport four crew members to the station.

Initiating a particularly eventful day in space activities, NASA’s Crew-7 astronauts harnessed themselves atop a Falcon 9 rocket at the Kennedy Space Center early Tuesday.

This dress rehearsal countdown aimed to pave the way for their launch on Friday as part of NASA’s seventh operational SpaceX ferry flight, CBS News reported.

A few hours later, SpaceX engineers at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California launched a batch of 21 Starlink internet satellites, employing a Falcon 9 with a first stage booster that embarked on its 15th flight.

About an hour after liftoff, these satellites were deployed into independent orbits, bringing the total count of launched Starlinks to 4,983.

Simultaneously, back at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, engineers conducted a test firing of the first stage engines of the booster designated to propel the Crew Dragon spacecraft into orbit on Friday.

Telemetry readings indicated that the booster performed according to expectations, marking a successful passage through the final significant trial before launch.

Subsequently, the Russian federal space agency Roscosmos launched the Progress MS-24/85P cargo ship from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome at 9:08 p.m. EDT.

While the Progress spacecraft pursued its trajectory toward the ISS, India’s Chandrayaan-3 robotic probe aimed to land on the moon in the early hours of Wednesday, U.S. time.

This endeavor followed just four days after Russia’s Luna-25 lunar lander experienced an unfortunate crash due to an erroneous thruster firing.

Chandrayaan-3 serves as a successor to a previous Indian lunar mission that encountered an unsuccessful landing in 2019.

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) affirmed on Tuesday that the spacecraft was operating smoothly and primed for a landing attempt at 8:34 a.m. Wednesday.

Written by staff