NASA’s 10th Crew Dragon flight to the International Space Station is ready for launch Saturday with two long-duration crew members on board along with two empty seats that will be used next February to carry Boeing’s Starliner astronauts back to Earth after an extended stay in orbit.Crew 9 commander Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov are scheduled for liftoff from pad 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station atop a Falcon 9 rocket at 1:17 p.m. EDT Saturday, roughly the moment Earth’s rotation carries the rocket into alignment with the station’s orbit. Cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov (left) will assist commander Nick Hague (right) during the Crew 9’s climb to space. The two empty seats will be used by Starliner commander Barry Already delayed two days by high winds and clouds associated with Hurricane Helene, forecasters predicted a 55 percent chance of acceptable weather along Florida’s Space Coast. There was a “moderate” risk of high winds and waves in the Atlantic Ocean along the spacecraft’s trajectory where the crew might have to land in an abort.All earlier Crew Dragon flights took off from nearby pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. The Crew 9 launch will be the first piloted flight from pad 40 after decades of service launching military satellites, NASA probes and, more recently, unpiloted SpaceX satellite and ISS cargo missions.NASA required SpaceX to upgrade pad 40 to support piloted flights out of concern that a major launch mishap could knock pad 39A out of action for an extended period, interrupting astronaut ferry flights to the International Space Station.Pad 40 now features a 265-foot-tall launch support tower, a 91.5-foot-long crew access arm for astronauts and technicians to reach a waiting Crew Dragon and a pad escape system to enable flight crews and support personnel to quickly slide to the ground from 220 feet up in a flexible, fire-resistant tube-like chute in an emergency.As with all space station flights, Crew 9 will be launched directly into the plane of the lab’s orbit. Twelve minutes after liftoff, the Crew Dragon “Freedom,” making its fourth flight, will be released to fly on its own. The original Crew 9 roster included then-commander Zena Cardman (left) and Stephanie Wilson (right), seen during training at the Johnson Space Center with crewmates Nick Hague (back right) and cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov (back left). Cardman and Wilson were bumped from the flight when NASA managers decided to use the Crew Dragon to bring the two Starliner astronauts back to Earth. / Credit: NASAIf all goes well, the spacecraft will execute an automated rendezvous, catching up with the space station from behind and below early Sunday, looping up to a point directly in front of the outpost and then moving in for a docking at the lab’s forward port around 5:30 p.m.Standing by to welcome Hague and Gorbunov aboard will be their new crewmates, Starliner commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore and his co-pilot Sunita Williams, now serving as commander of the space station.Also on board: Soyuz MS-26/72S commander Aleksey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and NASA astronaut Don Pettit, launched Sept. …
