SpaceX Crew Dragon docks with ISS
In a landmark moment for the commercial space industry, NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley have travelled to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a spacecraft built by Elon Musk’s SpaceX corporation.
Launched aboard a reusable SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space centre at 3.22pm on Saturday 30th May, the SpaceX Crew Dragon docked with the ISS on Sunday morning after a journey that saw it orbit the Earth at speeds of up 17,500mph.
The mission marks the first time that NASA astronauts have launched from US soil aboard a commercially built spacecraft and is the first manned launch from the US for almost a decade.
Known as NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2, the mission is an end-to-end test flight to validate the SpaceX crew transportation system, including launch, in-orbit, docking and landing operations. It also marks the first manned spaceflight test of Crew Dragon and paves the way for the spacecraft’s certification for regular crewed flights to the station.
An earlier unmanned flight, Crew Demo-1 took place in March 2019.
The mission has been carried out as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which is seeing the agency working with SpaceX and Boeing to design, build, test and operate safe, reliable and cost-effective human transportation systems to low-Earth orbit.
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