NASA, SpaceX Target Saturday, March 2, for Crew-8 Launch

The mission will be streamed live on X, @SpaceX, about an hour before launch.

At 7:15 p.m. EST, NASA+, NASA Television, the NASA app, YouTube, and the agency’s website will all show a live stream of the mission, including the launch and key moments afterward. Coverage for docking will start at 11:30 a.m. on Sunday, March 3, and the docking is set for about 2:10 p.m.

SpaceX launch schedule:

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket will take four NASA workers to the International Space Station (ISS). This is called the Crew-8 mission. The launch is set for March 2 at 11:16 p.m. EST (March 3 at 04:16 GMT) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. However, the exact time of the launch will depend on the weather and the readiness of the launch vehicle. 

The Dragon spacecraft that is helping with this mission has been to and from the space station on the Demo-2, Crew-2, Ax-1, and Crew-6 trips before. Its first stage will land on Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station after the stages separate.

Astronauts will be sent into space by Crew 8. NASA pilots Matthew Dominick, Michael Barrett, Jeannette Epps, and Alexander Grebenkin, a Russian cosmonaut, are going to the ISS for six months. The four space travelers will take over SpaceX’s Crew-7 journey from their coworkers.

The bad weather forecast for Friday, March 1, in offshore regions along the Dragon spacecraft’s flight path led joint teams to choose the new launch opportunity, NASA stated in an update at the beginning of February 29. “High winds and waves have been seen along the eastern coast, and they are expected to stay that way until Saturday morning.” There is a very small chance that Dragon will not fly or launch, but if it does, the wind and waves must be safe enough for the crew and ship to be safely recovered.

NASA and SpaceX had planned to launch Crew-8 on February 22, but they pushed it back to February 28 (and finally March 1) to give themselves more time after SpaceX successfully launched a private Intuitive Machines moon lander from the same pad on February 18.