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.
During the flight, SpaceX controlled the launch of the rocket from the former space shuttle control room at Kennedy, whilst Crew Dragon was commanded from the SpaceX mission control centre in Hawthorne, California.
Whilst en route to the station, Behnken and Hurley took control of the spacecraft for manual flight tests, demonstrating their ability to control the spacecraft should an issue with its automated system arise.
At the conclusion of the mission, Behnken and Hurley will board Crew Dragon, which will then autonomously undock, depart the space station, and re-enter Earth’s atmosphere. Upon splashdown off Florida’s Atlantic coast, the crew will be picked up by the SpaceX recovery ship and returned to the dock at Cape Canaveral.
“This is a dream come true for me and everyone at SpaceX,” said Elon Musk, chief engineer at SpaceX. “It is the culmination of an incredible amount of work by the SpaceX team, by NASA and by a number of other partners in the process of making this happen. You can look at this as the results of a hundred thousand people roughly when you add up all the suppliers and everyone working incredibly hard to make this day happen.”
Another great step in Elon’s quest to go to Mars, all the companies and technology he owns has one single purpose, to go to Mars. Will be great to see it in my lifetime!!
What an absolute waste of money and technology when there are so many issues to resolve on this planet first???!! Simply an ego trip for one of the wealthiest and therefore least accountable individuals on the planet. The sooner he goes to Mars and stays there the better! He’ll only be happy when he has control of the space surrounding the Earth .. whether it be with rockets blasting off every 5 minutes or satellites filling the night sky. Well done Elon – to hell with everyone else eh?
It is a good start, but lets not get ahead of our selves, it has taken more than 50 years to do what was done before, and until they have shown that they can get them back down to earth, and they do that many time, it is important to then go to the moon, which is a much shorter distance than Mars, or any other planets.
It’s very easy to be cynical, or even jealous about the ambitions of one individual, but without such single mindedness, we would never advance beyond the cave. Here is someone who is putting his money (yes, his money, no silver spoon – a self made billionaire) where his mouth is to support scientific research and make the planet a cleaner place.
Not entirely sure where launching a machine which consumes hydro-carbons on a GRAND scale, makes the planet a “cleaner place”?
No doubt you can clarify the point? And what do we hope to achieve when we can enter space in a reliable way? Mine the moon for minerals? Send politicians on a long, round trip…?
Given the huge range of possibilities which could cause the end of life on earth It’s nice to know someone has a plan to ensure the survival of one species at least.
Some contrasting reactions to this and the article on the first hovercraft. Wonder what the comments field will say about SpaceX in 60 years time, or what it said about Cockerell 60 years ago.
An excellent start and let’s hope that the comments become more encouraging and thoughtfull