NASA's SpaceX Crew-12 Prelaunch News Conference - 4K

NASA leaders hold a prelaunch news conference inside the John Holliman Auditorium of the NASA News Center at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday, Feb. 9, 2026, ahead of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 mission. Participants include Steve Stich, manager, NASA's Commercial Crew Program; Dina Contella, deputy manager, NASA's International Space Station Program; Andreas Mogensen, ESA (European Space Agency) Human Exploration Group Leader; William Gerstenmaier, vice president, Build and Flight Reliability, SpaceX. The Crew-12 mission will send NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev to the International Space Station aboard SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than 5:38 a.m. EST, Thursday, Feb. 12, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40.

What is said in the film

We. Knew. Everything right for you. And we've gone out and started. Right here.

And I feel like. We are prepared to get back. You are looking live at SpaceX Launch Complex 40, where a SpaceX Dragon and Falcon nine rocket are poised to lift crew 12 on a mission to the International Space Station. NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adeno and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andre Fedya have ventured to the International Space Station for a long duration mission aboard the orbiting laboratory. Good morning, and welcome to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

I'm Steve Smith with NASA communications. And joining us for this morning's prelaunch news conference are Steve Stich, program manager for NASA's Commercial Crew Program. Dino Candela, deputy manager of NASA's International Space Station program. Andreas Mogensen, human exploration group leader for the European Space Agency. And joining us remotely is William Gersten Meyer, vice president for build and flight reliability with SpaceX.

Crew 12 is scheduled to lift off no earlier than February 12th. That is an adjustment after an earlier weather scrubbed call today due to a poor, poor conditions in the ascent corridor. We're going to talk about that more in just a little bit. For those joining on the line, press star one to join the question queue. We will be taking questions from here in the room and from Colin.

And we will start with Steve Stich. Steve. Yes. Thanks, Steve. And thank you for your interest in commercial crew and ISIS program and human spaceflight.

Had the opportunity to be out, at the launch countdown clock there at the 39 press site this morning. And it was great to be out there with our team. We always have a little ceremony where we raise the flag for the mission and looked over at pad 39 B, and it's awesome to see the Artemis vehicle out at the pad. And then you look over at pad 40 and we see, Falcon nine with Dragon for our crew 12. And so it's really exciting time to have two different space launch systems set up to launch cruise into space.

We are really looking forward to crew 12 when we, get the right weather to launch. Jessica, Jack, Sophie and Andre into space. As Steve said today, we adjusted our launch date to no earlier than February. The 12th, 5:38 a. m.

eastern launch time. When we had our weather briefing this morning, we were looking at both the launch site weather, which looks very favorable for the entire week here at the Kennedy Space Center. But we have abort weather, up the East coast. Where should something happen to the launch vehicle? We can separate Dragon and then land safely.

When we did that, we could see high winds along a lot of that track. Up to 24 to 28 knots, especially in what we would consider our higher risk areas, the staging area. There's a low pressure system that's kind of moving in and setting over that staging area, and it's driving those winds up, and we can really see the models agreeing over the last 24 hours. So that is the reason why we, delayed the launch, for one day. We'll have a meeting again to, the tomorrow morning to go look at the weather again.

I would say right now at 30 the 12th doesn't look great as well. That low pressure system will likely be there and dominate our weather. So we'll have our weather briefing in the morning and then make a call as well. The winds there are a little lower, but still quite above our, our limits. So the good news is we have good opportunities for the remainder of the week.

And so we'll go ahead and, launch when we're ready, when we have favorable weather. It's been a really busy time, here at the Kennedy Space Center as we get ready for flight, we had our agency, IFR on Friday. That went well. We talked a number of topics about, the Dragon Bay 12 structures upgrade. We talked the Falcon nine, Starlink, investigation will cover that a little bit more.

We got through both those topics and we proceeded into the rest of the operation. Vehicle rolled out and, got out to the pad. We had a good, static fire completed, early Sunday morning, full duration static fire. And, the engines look good. We've gone through all the data.

We don't really see anything off nominal bill. We'll talk about one check valve on the trans for two that we replaced, but, we we adjusted the time of static fire a little bit. We talked a little bit before about how on crew nine, we had the plume from the static fire come back over and blow on to Dragon and leave some soot deposits. So we separated the static fire. We moved it about three hours early to accommodate the winds, and that went really well.

We know that dragon's in good shape. Then early this morning, we got the crew out and, into Dragon did a demonstration. Kind of. It's an end to end walkthrough of getting the crew in the vehicle, getting them, strapped in and suited up. I would say that all went well.

That operation did, we did have one ground server issue with, with com back and forth between, the ground team and Dragon. And that was resolved by swapping to a backup server on the ground. We'll go troubleshoot the primary server, but we had a little bit of a comm issue. Otherwise, I would say the vehicles are ready. The crew's ready, the ground systems are ready, and we just have to watch the weather, and and that's very humbling to go look at the East coast weather and see that it's bad.

And when, especially here, we just walked in and the weather outside is so, so beautiful. But we'll take it step by step, walk through the weather each day, and then we'll go launch when we're ready. Again, I want to thank the ISIS program. All of our teams, across space and NASA for all their hard work and getting us to this point. I want to thank the FAA, United States Space Force, the the detachment three and the Coast Guard as well, and all the agencies that support us.

It's a huge team, and we have shown lots of agility. And we'll just take it step by step and we'll launch when we're ready. And I'll turn it over to Dina. All right. Thank you.

Steve. So, you know, on Friday, he mentioned that we had, flight readiness review. And from an ISS standpoint, it was very clean. We're not tracking any major issues, and we've closed out all of our open work, and we're ready for crew 12 to come to come greet us on board. You know, the crews here already?

In Florida. And, we're looking forward to seeing them the next time. You know, a lot of folks will see them. There'll be a video from I. s.

s. , and we can't wait to get them on board. If you remember, we've got Jessica Meir and Andre fit. I of have both flown at this one ISIS before. So they're returning residents and then we have, to, to New fliers.

We have got Jack Hathaway and Sophie. I don't know, we're looking forward to having them on board as well. So, you know, on ISIS, we're not working any major problems, as I mentioned. And so, there's really not an urgent need to get crew 12 up there. You know, we're looking forward to some extra helping hands.

But it will launch when we're ready. Nothing urgent. That's, pressing on us right now. You know, Chris, Sergei and Sergei on board ISIS. They're doing great.

And they're in great spirits. And, Chris, on the US, operating segment has been focused a lot on research and packing. We're trying to close out the space X 33 cargo vehicle. After sometime in the end of February, after its crew, 12 guys get there. And, you know, the crew, 12 guys, when they get up there, they've got some great experiments.

I thought I'd highlight a couple of them. One of the experiments they'll be working on has to do with plant, micronutrients. And you can imagine you want to recycle the inedible parts of different plants and use those new nutrients, in the place of fertilizer, for example, to reduce your amount of fertilizer. And so we're looking at those types of nutrients for, enhancing and evolving food production, for eventual exploration missions. We are also working with a major pharmaceutical company on a protein crystal growth experiment for, drug treatments.

And we're looking at, you know, the bacteria that causes pneumonia and how that, can affect heart tissue. And this is important because some patients in hospitals, with pneumonia, eventually develop, heart disease. And so we'd like to if we can benefit life on Earth by trying to study that, it's a different mechanism or a different behavior, I'd say for this bacteria in, in microgravity. So maybe this will teach us some things that, will help life on Earth. So those are field experiments while they're up there.

Also they're going to see a lot of dynamic events to go through. Some I mentioned space 33 undock at the end of February. We're looking at early March for HDB, X-1 robotic release. So we unearth it. We'll present it to a port for a docking demonstration.

It's not actually docking, but just a sensor demonstration. And then we'll release it, again, all that's in early March. Sometime in mid March, we are planning to release also robotically, the Northrop Grumman 23 Cygnus vehicle. And, the, Russians are still continuing to, target the mid-to-late March timeframe for their launch of their progress. And, no changes to that schedule from my last briefing.

And, you know, the list goes on, but Northrop Grumman 24 comes up in early April. So I had mentioned a couple of spacewalks and those had moved from the January time frame, because the early crew 11 return, the, we're looking at a good time frame for those. Maybe we have an opportunity in mid-March and early April for those, we're continuing to refine that assessment. And then the launch and dock of this crew. And that timing will help us understand how much crew time we have to prepare for those.

And if that if that timing works. So, you know, really I wanted to thank the whole team for the early crew 11 return and then acceleration of this particular launch. A recent and a great job, as Steve has mentioned, everyone, but I would like to thank the commercial crew program. Our an international partnership. The space team, the other government agencies, our engineering and operations teams.

A fantastic job all around. As I said, we are ready to go and ready to welcome crew 12 on board. And, looking forward to a great, great mission. So with that, I'm. Hand it over to Andy.

Well, thank you. And, good morning. We at the European Space Agency are excited to be part of crew 12. On a personal note, I'm, excited, but also a little bit jealous of Andre Fedorov. I met him on the ice.

As we hand it over from crew six to crew seven. And I'd love to be in his, seat, of course, but, the next best thing is, is being here today supporting my, ESA colleague Sophie Adam, not, on her first mission to the ISS. Sophie, is part of our new class of astronauts that we selected in 2022. She is the first from that class to fly to the ISS. So we are really excited to see, our new generation of astronauts getting their first, experience, in space, in 2022 when when Sophie was selected, we had more than 22,500 applicants from all over Europe.

So it really shows the level of interest and fascination among, young Europeans as well for what we do in space. And as I think has already been alluded to this morning, this is really, an exciting time. We have, Artemis two out on the pad as well. And I think if I'm going to highlight a couple things that Sophie will be working on during her mission, you know, the ISS is really an incredible testbed for preparing for the future. And some of the things that she will be working on will be helping us, prepare for for future flights, just to name a couple of things, the, European, Enhanced Exploration device, is a new exercise device that, Sophie will be among the first to use on the ISS.

You know, the i. s. s. affords us an incredible amount of space for exercise. We have three different devices, but, in the future, we will likely be much more limited in size.

And so this new E-4 device is a combination of a rowing machine, bicycle machine, and a strength exercising device. And hopefully it'll give us, new information about how to do countermeasures in space, using new types of devices that are much more compact and smaller in size. Sophie will also continue the use of the European everywhere application, which is a health monitoring tool. Among other things, first flown by Thomas Pesquet. Our Artemis two crew will also actually be using, the European Everywhere app.

So we're excited again to make that link between ISS and, and Artemis. Another interesting, topic or, experiment, that, Sophie will be working on is a, new, ultrasonic device that allows astronauts to, do ultrasounds without, support from ground. So this new, system uses augmented reality and artificial intelligence to allow astronauts, to do, ultrasounds without remote guidance. Today on the ISIS, whenever we do ultrasounds, we have, remote gliders, helping us. That's going to be much more difficult as we travel further into space.

So again, and, fantastic opportunity to use ISIS for, development of future technologies. So we're really looking forward to, crew 12 and, Sophie's mission on the International Space Station. This is, as always, a huge effort, from, everyone at the European Space Agency. And, we're very proud to be part of crew 12 and to work with NASA. Again.

So thank you. And, without those words, I'll hand over to, William Kirsten Meyer in Hawthorne. Thanks, Andreas. It's my pleasure to be with you here today and get a chance to to talk about crew 12, human spaceflight is really special for us here at SpaceX. We go above and beyond to make sure everything is ready.

We're ready to support the crews. It's really a different a different flight for us. And we spend an extra time making sure things are really ready to go. And we're really ready to to go do the mission. The Steve talked about.

We completed a static fire. The rocket is, ready to go is ready to fly. We found one check valve that was a little sluggish and held back a little bit of pressure. It's on a transfer tube seal. We typically see that with static fires.

We haven't done many static fires lately, but, in this case, we saw that we removed the check valve, put the new one in. We also bore scoped the line. We saw a little bit of moisture in the line. That's probably indicative of what caused the problem. There's likely some ice formation that may have caused a slight pressurize, but again, that's part of the diligence we go through to make sure everything is absolutely ready to go fly.

Everything else looked really good on the rocket. This morning. We went through a dry dress with the crew to make sure they're comfortable, and our operators here in Hawthorne are ready to to interact with the crew and get the capsule closed out, get the hatch closed, go through these activities. This is only our second launch from pad 40 with crew. So this is a chance for us to make sure things were really ready.

And and that activity went extremely smooth this morning. The dry dress was very good. We're ready to go once the weather gets ready to go. As Steve talked about, we had a problem, last week, on Monday with, Starlink G17 32 flight. It was during the third burn of the, of the back engine.

It's a deorbit burn. During that burn, we were changing the geo profile to go look at a new way of essentially chilling in the engine. And it turns out, through that process, we created a condition that essentially, starved the GPS of proper oxygen and essentially caused a problem with the engine during the deorbit burn. I really want to stress that what occurred on Starlink is unique to Starlink. We don't do three burns with true missions.

The first burn of the crew mission is always the same. It's, fully chilled in, fully, ready to go fly through in a gravity environment where there's no microgravity conditions. It's a really solid burn that occurs. And we've done that the same way for every crewed mission. The second burn of the of the crew flights are is also very standard.

We didn't have to change anything. Based on what we learned from the Starlink mission. It's the same profile we use. We stay with the standard kill profile, etc.. So again, I think we're continuing to learn.

We're still continuing to kind of push the envelope to see how our hardware systems operate. And ultimately by pushing kind of the envelope and seeing the corners, we understand where hardware works, where it doesn't work well. So then when it comes time to fly crew, we can go back more to the center of the envelope. We can get that high reliability that's demanded by a crew mission. So so that's what occurred on, a couple weeks ago, on Monday or a week ago on Monday.

Again, a tremendous amount of effort was done to make sure we really understood the problem. There was no crossover to crew. We went through a full investigation, developed the full Valkyrie, had, the FAA, NASA, the space Force were all involved with us in the investigation and were truly ready to fly. And there's there's no crossover at all to the crew flight that's coming up. You also may have noticed, if you look over at 39 eight, that crew arm is coming down.

We're going to do some maintenance on some bearings on the crew arm. I think the general plan is we'll keep the crew arm on the ground, if we do those repairs. But are we ready to put the crew arm back up again? If we need to go back and watch crew from pad 39. So again, you'll see that it doesn't say we're backing away from 39 for crew flights.

We'll just have it in reserve when it's needed. And we need to do this repair of the bearings on the on another interesting thing is this will be the first, landing at landing zone 40. So we still have landing zone two available to us if we need, but we're going to now land the, first stage of the Falcon rocket right next to the launch pad. And that makes for easier processing for us and moves us forward and keeps kind of launch and landing in the same general area. So again, I think overall we're we're ready to go.

We treat human spaceflight, very differently than we do any other flight. We work extremely hard with all of our partners, with all the team members, to really make sure we're really ready to go fly. There's no higher calling in. There is to fly crew. You know, I often say that, you know, especially with the Super Bowl and the Olympics, you think about athletics and sports.

Human spaceflight is the ultimate team sport. You have to be 100% transparent about what you know, what you don't know. Share with your teammates, share with the crew, share with everyone, and make sure we're really ready to go flying. It's an honor to be part of this team. It's an honor to represent space and it's honor to to be with you all today.

We look forward to your questions when they come back to you. Steve. Thank you. Thank you everyone. We're going to start our questions here in the room.

If you have called in star one, we'll get you in the queue to ask a question if you wish. And star two we'll let you drop out of the queue and we will start here in the room. And we're going to start with Will Robinson. Smith from Spaceflight Now. Hi.

Thanks so much Will Robinson Smith for Spaceflight Now. Thank you for taking the time to talk with us today. Quick went to Bill, Kirsten Meyer and then to to Andy Mogensen. Regarding how quickly 39 eight could come back into rotation if needed. What's the time frame if if NASA calls that that pad could be ready for, another human spaceflight activity.

And then for Andy, can you describe the the mass of the workout equipment that, Sophie is going to be demonstrating? You know, is it something that, you know, is able to fit alongside them inside Dragon or just need to go into the, pressurized cargo area? Thanks. In terms of 39 day readiness, we'll be ready to support from 39 A as soon as we can get the rocket ready to go fly and get the call up in place. So if NASA has a need, as soon as we're notified, we'll start processing the Dragon capsule.

We'll start processing the Falcon vehicle and the timeframe it takes us to get Falcon and Dragon ready. We can be ready to get the pad up and operating. And regarding, the exercise, for the exercise device, I mean, it's too big for, a capsule. But, potentially for, gateway. But this really is the first step.

It's quite, massive. Still, because of the countermeasure, system with the anti vibration system, because it's, a rowing device, it has, a different movement and then the other exercise devices. So this will give us more understanding, of, of exercise devices like that. And these are really, more of a step on the way to, an exploration exercise device than the actual end product. I would say in all of this that we were planning to launch it on a Northrop Grumman cargo vehicle, which allows us a little bit more space.

And, you can launch different pieces and parts of it, but, yeah, there's still quite a bit of mass associated with this isolation system. So it's not doing. And one more in the room before we go to things. All right. Thank you Ken Kramer SpaceX up close.

Thanks for all doing this. And and good luck. My question actually is for all three of you. You you mentioned Andre, is this new ultrasound device. So a question I've had for a while since the crew 11 medical evacuation is are you guys reevaluating what medicines and what medical devices you should have on board the I.

s. s.? And would your device have helped crew 11 at all in in analyzing whatever was wrong? Thanks. Why don't I just kick us off here?

I think I'll take it, but, I'll just say, you know, we are continually looking at the various risks on board. What are the risks, medically, for our crewmembers? You know, there's a large programmatic risk associated with having to bring home crews early. And, and we're just continually looking at the complement of, equipment that we have on board. So there is, the specific item that he's talking about is more of an experiment to see about remote guidance and that type of thing.

It's not specifically something that we are, manifesting on board or any particular, risk. It's more just overall risk reduction, for multiple things. Understanding blood flow and space is critical because it doesn't operate quite exactly the same. You know, we're just continually looking at all the various risks. And so his, his, remote guidance type of techniques are important for exploration.

And, really, there's not been a very specific targeted, something associated with his device that, is going to be used, associated with that return. And I would just say I watched the ISIS program operate all the time, and they're trying to all the time look at the risk of the human body in space. If you just think about the population on Earth, everybody in this room has a little different blood physi physiology. Everybody has a little bit different metabolism. Everybody's different.

And drugs work differently on all of us here. And so if you think about what we're doing right now and it's flying, more and more people, you get a wider population of how people behave in microgravity for these long duration flights, we tend to try to fly more and more diagnostic capability to augment what we have here on the ground. Here we have wonderful medical capability. But again, for Mars, someday we're going to need these long duration flights where people are in microgravity for over a year. And so I assess it's really a pathfinder for that.

It's is there is there any specific medication or device you can point to that you would like to have up there? Well, there's a there's an entire hospital's worth of equipment. And frankly, really there is a but but but practically speaking, like I said, we are looking at all kinds of things to upgrade our medical complement. But there's a lot of things that are just not practical. And so that's one you need to bring.

Astronauts home from space if you think you need something that you can imagine. There's a lot of devices, in a hospital setting that are available that are just not practical to send up, onward, I guess. So, there's not really one specific thing I'd say that I'd like to claim here, but, it's we're continually trying to see what we can do to downscale equipment and, and manifest it on board just for risk mitigation purposes. Thank you. We're going to go to the phones.

Irene Klotz from Aviation Week. Good morning. Do you hear me? All right. We have you.

Thank you. I have two questions. First, for dinner, do you have an update on the status of the repairs to the launch pad at Baikonur? Following, the damage from the after that and the 28 launch. And, probably for Steve, are there any, any schedule issues that might need to be deconstructed with crew 12 launch and, ongoing, work on, on Artemis for the wet dress.

Thanks. All right. So relative to the to the, Baikonur Cosmodrome, launch pad for progress. And Soyuz, of course, that repairs, under the guidance of Roscosmos. And so I don't have any more details to share.

I'll say that they're still targeting March 22nd. We've not heard of any schedule changes, associated with that. So, you know, most cases we'll have more detail on how they're progressing with that. But I'll just give you from a schedule standpoint, nothing has changed. So and on the busy activities here, at the range, we've got a couple of things we're watching, one, ULA has the United Launch Alliance has a launch, a Vulcan launch for Space Force, also on Thursday.

So we'll work with them. If the weather doesn't look good for us, we'll give them an opportunity to go fly their mission and, and accomplish their mission as well. And then we're watching and talking to Artemis every single day. We did that, as you heard prior to, prior to their, wet dress rehearsal. We'll watch what they're doing right now.

We don't see conflicts this this week, but we continue to talk to them all the time. They've made progress at changing out a few Seals, and they're doing some testing on those seals. And we'll we'll make sure that we have an integrated operation where we can go fly and crew 12, since we have a vehicle at the pad that's ready to go. And Dragon Field was hypergolic, and then we'll work them in as well. And they're ready to go do their white dress.

Thank you. And our next question comes from Steven Clarke at Ars Technica. Go ahead Steven. Hi Steven Clarke from our Seneca. Thanks for taking my question.

I think my question is probably for, Steve or know about the upcoming Starliner cargo mission. Is that still expected to launch? I think, in the April timeframe. At one point, it was, expected to fly in in that time frame. Is it still expected in that time frame?

And also, you know, where where things stand right now in the investigation of of what happened on the, on the crew test flight and what kind of, information or data they hope to learn from this upcoming flight to be able to certify. Thanks. I'll start and see if it has anything to add. So, right now we're continuing to have a no earlier than April launch date, but we're really driven by closing out all the technical work we need to do ahead of that flight. We've made great progress on in the helium system.

We remember we had in the service module, we had helium leaks on that flight. We've changed out the seals, with the seal that's resistant to, and nitrogen tetroxide vapor. And so that's been through our board and the IFA has been closed out. We did not fire, the crew module thrusters, on the vehicle we planned to fly for Starliner one. All 12 of those thrusters were not fired in the crew and cargo processing facility for Boeing.

Those are all work good. And then we're continuing to finish. As we talked about last fall, we did an immense amount of testing at the White Sands test facility with an integrated doghouse and, two thrusters, what we call a single engine. Delta Klaw, one and two. We're taking all that data right now, and in the process of building a model to try to predict thruster behavior.

That model has been given, shared with NASA. We're going through all that modeling right now, and and so when we get through that and get, to a point where we're comfortable in predicting thruster performance, then we'll go move forward and, and, and look toward a launch date. But again, we have a lot of data to go work through, to get ready to go fly. And really, the purpose of Starliner one is to validate the changes that we made. If you think about, in the service module, we've made changes to draw heat away from each individual, reaction control system thruster.

We've made changes to seals to keep the plume from the Omak, the orbital maneuvering engines from going back into the air. We have instrumentation in the doghouse just to measure temperature throughout each of the dog houses. And so we've done a number of changes, really. Starliner one is about validating those changes in the flight environment, collecting that data and then moving forward for the next flight, which would be a plan to be a crew rotation mission. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Andrea Lynn Felder, Houston Chronicle. Go ahead, Andrea. Thank you so much. This question is for Dina. During the 12, excuse me.

During the crew 12 news conference, Jessica Meir mentioned that the space station crew will talk to the art of his two crew. I'm curious, why are they going to be talking and what will they discuss? Thank you. Well, you can imagine they're probably talking about their various views that each of them is seeing, you know, their earth views. Probably.

Look a lot different from the Artemis two viewpoint. And I assess viewpoint. So, we'll see. You know, their mission overlap and, how that conversation takes place, but, I'm sure as, good friends that are also probably going to just be excited to talk to each other from different parts of the, of the cosmos. Thank you.

And next, we have Robert Pearlman from Collectspace. Go ahead. Robert. Hi. Thank you.

On, some of the code space in Space. com, for Bill Gerstenmaier. Does the bearings work, drive the timing of the removal? The access arm on 39 a and is there other work planned for that pad that preclude space X from re reinstalling it when that work is done? Or why is it being kept on the ground, and where is it being physically stored or worked on?

Here we're going to remove the arm and then the the bearings. The arm physically has to come down to get the bearings. These are the bearings that actually hold the arm to the tower. They're unique to 39 and they're very different than they are for the arm that's on 40. And to physically get access to those the arm needs to be removed.

Those bearings have to come out and they have to be reinstalled. We'll do that work at the Kennedy Space Center. And the intent there is we don't need to put the arm back up because again, as I described, we have, you know, when we get a call up for a mission and we have to go fly a mission if it requires that we have plenty of time to get the arm back up, that's the easy piece of putting it up. You also see a lot of work going on at 39 eight. That's to work for Starship.

That doesn't impact our ability to launch from the pad. We're careful that we keep those things separate and we're ready to go. But again, I think this is just the right way to get to the arm. There is no way we could repair these bearings in place. We looked at it, we put some epoxy in place.

We put some inverters in place. It was a bandaid kind of fix for those bearings. But it's the right thing to do is get those bearings replaced in an environment underground, make some upgrades to them and then we'll be ready to go put the arm back up when it's time to go fly. If we need to go fly. Thank you.

Our next question comes from TJ Mascara Epoch Times. Go ahead TJ. Good morning. Thank you so much for my questions for Andy. With the increased launch traffic, we're starting to see, here in Florida and with the increased interest you're seeing, with, people wanting to be astronauts, I was wondering if the, PSA will ever, develop and start flying its own, crew capsule and their crewed missions.

So just if I understood the question right, the question is, will ESA develop a crew capsule? Was that the question? Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Well, that's a good question. But it's something that, we are certainly, looking at and, if everything goes, according to plan, it's a potential thing that we might bring to our member states. So the European Space Agency consists of, 23 European member states, and they are the ones that, actually sets, European space policy. And, it happens every three years at our ministerial conference, the last one was in November last year. And so the next one is in November 2028.

And this is potentially one of the, topics that we would bring up, to discuss with our member states. But, it's still a ways off in the future. But certainly it's something that we are discussing. Thank you. Our next question is going to come in from Jeff Foust from Space News.

Go ahead, Jeff. Hey. Good morning. A couple of follow ups for Steve from some earlier questions. One, if the weather improves for Thursday, does crew 12 have priority on the range over the early Vulcan launch, or is there a way to squeeze both of them in, given I think they're pretty close together in terms of the time of the morning, they're scheduled to launch and then, for Starliner, what point do you have to make a decision on what vehicle flies the next crew rotation mission after crew 12?

How long how late could you fly Starliner one and still have enough data, enough time to look at the data from that flight to decide it's available for that next crewed mission to the station towards the end of the year. Thanks. At the address, the first question. Yeah. Right.

Right. Now we, crew 12 has priority on the range, over the Vulcan launch. And that's what we want to do today a little bit is look at the weather, talk to them, see their readiness, and, if the weather's not looking very favorable, we would we would potentially give up the 12 for for them to allow them to go fly. So the way the rain scheduling works, we had the 11th and 12th as our two prime dates. And so we we have priority right now.

But the way we work across, all the users at the range, we do this sort of thing all the time and space does as well. With their flights, we try to optimize the schedule so everybody gets to go fly. In terms of the next crew rotation mission, we have not decided yet. In the fall, it could be either, a crew 13 mission or Starliner to we want to work through and get through Starliner one into the summer timeframe and then see where we're at before. So we have some time to decide.

We have, crews in training for both missions. And, we have a little bit more time to decide into the summer. So thank you. We're going to come back in the room and we'll. Hi.

Thanks for allowing another question. Question to, Bill Gerstenmaier into, Dina as well. One of the experiments that Jessica Meir mentioned that's going to be conducted is, demonstration of of landing on the moon. And she, you know, was specific to mention that this is vehicle agnostic, that it's not directly related to either Starship or Blue Moon. But I wonder, to to Bill.

You know, what learnings are there? Is SpaceX taking away from work like this? And to Dina, are there future experiments planned on station that will directly feed into, the Artemis landing profile specifically? Thanks. Yeah.

Again, I think we recognize the microgravity environment is very different than A1G environment here on the Earth. So if we can use the crews to demonstrate some things, see how operations go in space, we can start applying those to, to various other regimes to look at, control authority, layout of, other things. You know, we're also going to be building for Starship, essentially, one gravity. Lunar, a lunar lander mockup, which will be high fidelity and crews will get a chance to experiment and use that, as part of the HLS program. So that's a pretty exciting thing that's coming up.

But again, I think we want to take advantage of all these flights, take advantage of space station, you know, learn everything we can as we continue to keep moving, you know, human presence further into the solar system. As I'm various talked about, you know, what we can do today in low-Earth orbit, where we have pretty rapid communication back and forth. It's very different than what we're going to do when we go longer distances away from Earth. So what we can learn off of space station, and how we can advance and get prepared for the future is tremendously important. So I think this is a good example of one of the things that we'll get to do on station that we'll definitely carry forward to future programs.

And I I'll just pile it on that. We absolutely, are excited about this experiment. And, you know, we have over the years done experiments like this to test out and microgravity, you know, is your reaction time the same? Are you able to do exactly the same thing that you done on Earth? What parts of training might be different or some anything that we would do differently, after microgravity environment to go and then land a spacecraft.

So and we've done these, like I said, some variations of them and learning each time some new things. And so I can envision, as we ramp up to landing on the moon, that there will be additional experiments and that's one of the reasons we fly, says, is to, try to use it as a springboard for exploration and doing as much testing as we can on board I. s. s. to ensure that we have, the best operational, plan we can for any spacecraft that will land on the moon or go to Mars.

So. Thank you. We're going to go to the phones for the next question. Jonathan Siri from Fox News. Great job.

Thanks so much for doing this. This this questions for whoever, wants to talk about backup opportunities. I believe the one on Friday is 515. What opportunities do you have going into the weekend and perhaps early next week? Yeah, I'll talk about the opportunities.

Let's see. So we do have a Friday, February 13th, 5:15 a. m. eastern. We would dock at about, 315 on Saturday.

The Saturday launch opportunity is, what we call a long phasing. So it takes quite a number of hours to get, to i. s. s.. It's around, 42 to 44 hours.

We would look at that one very carefully because the Dragon is a great spacecraft. It has a limited finite ability to be in space. And so we want to make sure we optimize the amount of time we spend on the front versus the time we could spend on the back end. And then we have opportunities, Sunday, the 15th, 16th and 17th as well if needed. So we have a good string of opportunities.

Every fourth day or so is the long phase. And so we just got to look at that one carefully. Hopefully the weather cooperates and we can get off this week. We'll just take it one step at a time. I think we've been here before watching the weather up the east coast in the winter, when cold fronts and low pressure systems move through and cause the wind and waves to to increase.

So thank you. Let's come into the room. Ken Kramer's face up close. Thanks. Thanks again.

For Dina and Andreas. Andreas, tell us about the future of European astronauts going to the ISS. A couple of years ago, you had three in a row. I'm wondering what's what's the future for that, as well as when you might expect an Artemis launch in for Dina? I think, last week you mentioned a really interesting science experiment to me about, these, IV bags that you're going to you're going to make, try and make, can you talk a little bit more about that and what is the source of the water?

Is it from the UPA, I guess, and what kind of ground testing you've done to give you confidence that this is going to work is really interesting. Thank you. Well, after, Sophie, we have, Rafael. Up next, his exact, mission still is a little bit up in the air, I think. But, I think in 2027, 2028, he will be the next ESA astronaut to fly, on a long duration mission.

And then, you know, we're hoping for, potentially a third long duration mission prior to the end of ISIS. So potentially in 2029, and of course, we, I mentioned a little bit, our, 2022 class of ESA astronauts. What was also unique about that selection is that we selected a group of what we call reserve astronauts. We've already seen two of, the reserve astronauts fly as what we call project astronauts. That was, Marcus Vande from Sweden on, axiom three.

And, who's Nancy, from Poland on axiom four. And I think, we can probably also expect to see some more, ESA project astronauts fly on future private astronaut missions. So there are, many new, flight opportunities, in this commercial world. And, of course, we're also extremely excited to work, as a partner with NASA on Artemis. And, you know, first step is Artemis two.

We'll see, how Artemis two goes. And then when, Artemis three, four, and five come along. But that's certainly also on the horizon. And we're, of course, very excited to one day see, a European astronaut, on an artist's mission as well. Okay.

And then relative to the IV food bag experiment, if you didn't hear the previous discussion, I had mentioned that what we're trying to do is, to create I. V. medical food bags for, potential use in space. On a mars trip, for example, so long that your IV fluid will expire by before the end of the trip. And you, without knowing what type of medical events you might have, you might have to launch a number of them and save a lot of mass and and, volume to take up.

So it would be better if we would just be able to plug in. I just an empty bag, into our potable water system and then fill it and filter it appropriately so that it would have, all of the, I'd say microbes filtered out anything that, you wouldn't want to insert into your, you know, medical fluid bag. So in order to do that, we're taking it out of the portable potable water system. So this would be the type of, water that, is potentially been processed through the urine processor, and then through a number of series of other processors. But this particular experiment is trying to look at this filtration that takes it to an even finer level so that it even filters out, all the bacteria and everything else that would be, untenable for, for, medical I b iv purposes.

So, we've done a version of this in the past, and this is a little bit, a different type of filtration system. We're trying to refine it even more. And, I believe it might be smaller as well. And so, just trying to, to get our processes down. And then at the end, we'll bring a medical, bag home and we'll test it and we'll say, is it medical grade or not?

And, or are there any upgrades that we'd like to do in the future so that we have this capability? How long does it look? How long does it take to do this experiment to collect the water in this bag? I, I don't know, for sure, but I would guess it'd be very quick. It's the filtration device.

It's not something like a large machine that it has to go through. It's more like a simple filtration device. So I guess, you know, matter of minutes, a couple of hours to set it up. I don't know if we can find that out for you. Okay, next, let's go to the, go to the phones.

David Danault from About space today news. Go ahead. David. My question is for Andreas. Yesterday, Sophie was really excited, and she said, well, with this device, she had a rope to pull down.

You said it's like a bicycle. It's like a rolling machine. How big is this? And the applications for long duration missions. How long is it?

How does it work? But specifically, step by step, what are the elements that the astronauts will use? So the it's a platform probably three feet, wide. So that you can stand on it. And it has a variety of, of, modes.

You can fold out what essentially is a flywheel, and that allows you to do rowing exercises. But also to do, cycle ergometer exercises. So it uses, some of the same technology that's used on Sievers. And then what's ingenious is that on the platform itself are various, places where you can hook in, bars, ropes, other things. So that you can do well, you can do squats, you can do bench press, overhead press curls.

Even a rope pulling, exercise. So it's very, very versatile. And it will be very interesting to see it, performing in space. Thank you. And we're going to go to Adrian Lynn Felder from the Houston Chronicle.

Go ahead. And Adrian Andrew. Thanks for the follow up question. Dina, I just want to ask this again. You know, Jessica made it sound like there was a scheduled time to talk to Artemis two.

So I'm wondering, is there a practical mission reason they're talking, or is it just to say hi? Thanks. There's no practical mission reason why that's necessary. But, I do think it's a as Steve highlighted, this is a very unique, unusual time and human spaceflight where we have human beings, orbiting the Earth, and then we'll also have them orbiting the moon concurrently. And so I do think it's appropriate.

And, it sounds like a great opportunity for them to to, like I said, discuss the, moon views and the Earth views that they each have. Thank you. And next we have Jonathan Syria at Fox News. Go ahead. Jonathan, thanks so much for the, second question.

I'm really interested in the augmented reality ultrasound that you're going to be testing on this mission. Why what are the advantages of ultrasound? And on a hypothetical trip to Mars, what are the potential uses that it would be put through? Thank you. So check on, Well, I'll just say, you know, we do ultrasound.

We use ultrasound, quite a bit on the, the space station, you know, where it's a lot like Earth. You're trying to do diagnostics without, you know, anything that's super intrusive. So, it's a really great tool to look and and, kind of understand the human physiology and human physiology is different in microgravity. And the specific experiment that Andy was talking about, with augmented reality, as you said, one of the things we're trying to do is avoid having a remote guider, on the Earth. So you can have very long transmission times where if you were talking to your doctor and you asked him a question and you tried to, show him an image, from your own ultrasound, and it took 20 minutes to respond.

You can imagine this would be a very difficult operation to try to to kind of go back and forth. So, we're just trying to increase that capability that the crew members have on board for diagnosing their own issues. And this is a great tool for doing so, if you have anything to add. No, I mean, this, you know, ultrasound is one of the few devices we have, to look inside the body. You know, we don't have any, unfortunately, mobile X-ray devices or MRI scanner.

So, ultrasound, as you said, is a very important diagnostic tool on the ISIS. And we have time for one more question this morning. We're going to come here in the room to will. Hi. Thanks for allowing one more follow up.

Question to Steven to to build some Meyer. Given that there's just, a handful of planned years left for the International Space Station, as you look towards the future of the commercial stations and, future NASA astronauts flying to those, I wonder, are there any additional experiments planned for, Dragon that would allow for, cooperation with these future commercial stations, any, tests of of communication devices or additional advances that you want to see in these last few years that you have of Dragon going back and forth to the I. s. s.. Thanks.

Yeah, I'll let Bill start, and then I'll, follow on. Yeah. On some of our private missions, we've used, we call it a laser. It's essentially a laser that we communicate with our Starlink satellite networks in the trunk of Dragon. So that that's a device we're looking at using potentially more and more.

We may may add that it can also relieve us from some tedious communication requirements we have with Dragon. So that's something I think we'd like to look at the future. We're starting to use that now more and more on our second stages with, Starlink. We have a, a mini, a mini, Starlink antenna that flies, on those flights from Vandenberg, where the essentially religious of ground coverage and allows us to communicate with our Starlink network. So I think we're starting to tie our Starlink network and communications more and more into, other activities that essentially are giving a continuous communication link for these potential future commercial space stations that are that are in orbit or are planned to be in orbit.

And I would say, as we look toward the future of these stations as, as Bill said, communication, the network we know would not be there. That's one thing. We'll have to look at how we approach and dock we to rely on, the communication systems. And it's to close the link between the visiting vehicle, and, and station. Right.

We passed data, we passed G. P. S. data and other things. So we've got to start thinking through that a little bit.

How we will do that with the commercial stations. We've got different ideas and concepts of what we might do there. And then when you dock, once the vehicle stopped, we have to think about ISIS has an incredible system of exchanging air back and forth between vehicles and but, you know, you want to condition the vehicle that's there, our crewed vehicle. So we got to think about that a little bit. So we're in the middle of thinking about all those things, but specifically for Dragon, the, the pleasure experiment that Bill talked about is the one that we've demonstrated so far.

Thank you. And that is going to wrap up our questions for this morning's prelaunch news conference for crew 12. You can follow all continuing progress on the countdown and on the mission on NASA's social media channels, including at space Station and at NASA. We'll also have continuing coverage at nasa. gov/commercial crew, and we will have a broadcast ahead of, ahead of the launch of the crew 12 mission.

And for those just joining us, the crew 12 mission has been targeted for February 12th, no earlier than February 12th. And that is dependent on the weather, which, launched flight teams will be monitoring very closely for now. Thank you very much for joining us. Go, NASA, go space go crew 12. Thank you.

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