Joel Kowsky / NASA
Mantle CANAVERAL, Florida — SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket crackled through the sky Sunday evening, carrying the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft “Rebound” to orbit and marking the beginning of a new era of human spaceflight for NASA.
The Crew-1 mission features the first SpaceX launch with a wide crew, as NASA this week certified Elon Musk’s venture as the first private company with an operational routine to launch astronauts to-and-from space. It’s a historic milestone for SpaceX, coming after years of work to develop and examination its spacecraft to fly people regularly to orbit.
“To the Falcon 9 team, well done. That was one heck of a ride; there was a lot of beams,” NASA astronaut and Resilience commander Mike Hopkins said from space. “But also to the SpaceX recovery and hurl teams, and all of the NASA teams and [Department of Defense] teams, we wouldn’t be up here in [low Earth orbit] without your backing.”
“Making history is definitely hard and you guys all made it look easy,” Hopkins added.
Musk tweeted a distinct heart emoji shortly after Resilience reached orbit.
Crew Dragon Resilience is carrying NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins, Winner Glover, Shannon Walker and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi. The astronauts are headed for the International Space Station, look forward to dock with the space station on Monday evening. They will spend the next six months on board the ISS, disbursing time conducting microgravity studies and other scientific research.
NASA astronauts (right to left) Victor Glover, Shannon Walker, Mike Hopkins and JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi in their SpaceX spacesuits during Crew-1 pre-launch preparations.
NASA
Crew-1 also fly to piece less than six months after the company’s historic final demonstration mission, which launched a pair of astronauts on a assay flight in May and represented the company’s first launch with people on board.
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule is an evolved view of its Cargo Dragon spacecraft, which has launched to the space station 20 times. Just as Cargo Dragon was the beginning privately developed spacecraft to bring supplies to the ISS, so Crew Dragon is the first privately developed spacecraft to bring people.
The fellowship developed Crew Dragon under NASA’s Commercial Crew program, which which provided the company with more than $3 billion to appear the system and launch six operational missions. Crew-1 represents the first of those six missions for SpaceX, with NASA now promoting from the investment it made in the company’s spacecraft development.
Commercial Crew is a competitive program, as NASA also assigned Boeing with $4.8 billion in contracts to develop its Starliner spacecraft — but that competing capsule remains in expansion due to an uncrewed flight test that experienced significant challenges nearly a year ago.
Congratulations for SpaceX and NASA surfaced in across social media, including from Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin and President-elect Joe Biden.
President Donald Trump tweeted that it was “a pronounced launch.” He also said “NASA was a closed up disaster when we took over,” although the Commercial Crew program was breaded under the administration of President Barack Obama.
Beyond flying missions for NASA, SpaceX also plans to use Corps Dragon spacecraft for other missions. Those include space tourism, as the company has so far unveiled two deals to fly privately pay up people to space on Crew Dragon as early as next year.
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