SpaceX’s Crew Dragon has sent its first two humans into space, and they’re enjoying incredible views from the International Space Station.
On May 27, NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley took off from the Kennedy Space Center with the help of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It was the first time that SpaceX had sent humans into space, and ushered in a new era for capabilities. of NASA space flight. Behnken and Hurley have been at the station for almost a month and are expected to return in August.
On Saturday, Behnken shared a picture via Twitter of the fantastic view from the space station. Spectators can see the crew Dragon in the center pointing to the right, docked at the space station and waiting to return. The image also shows the H-II Transfer Vehicle, a cargo pod from the Japanese space agency JAXA.
At the bottom of the image, viewers can see the curvature of the Earth. This fantastic view has given rise to the term “general effect”, coined in 1987 by writer Frank White to describe the effect of viewing humanity’s home from a distance. Astronauts describe feeling a sense of wonder, realizing that almost all of human history is contained in this fragile blue sphere that floats in the vastness of space.
The image was captured by NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy, who was already aboard the space station when they arrived. Cassidy arrived on April 9, accompanied by Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner. The trio was taken with a Soyuz rocket taking off from Kazakhstan, an agreement that will change with the successful launch of the Crew Dragon from the United States.
Cassidy and Behnken conducted a spacewalk on Friday at 1:39 p.m. EST to help improve the space station’s solar array used to generate electricity from the sun. They replaced five of the six oldest batteries that used nickel-hydrogen to power the starboard armor 6. They also installed two of the three planned lithium-ion batteries, using technology a little closer to the battery inside a phone. smart, and two of the three related adapter plates to complete the circuit.
NASA reported that the spacewalk was a success. It is the first of four spacewalks planned to replace the batteries, and took six hours and seven minutes.
“We started putting on the suit around 6:45 am GMT, opened the hatch around 11:30 am, and finished our suits around 6:30 pm,” Cassidy wrote on her Twitter page. “I worked during lunch and left early!”
It was Cassidy and Behnken’s seventh spacewalk, and the pair are set to complete another spacewalk to replace the remaining battery on July 1.
After sharing the image, Behnken also shared two more photos showing Earth from above as it moves the boundary between day and night over the sky.
Behnken and Hurley did not know how long they would stay on the space station when they were first launched. Before Friday’s spacewalk, Space flight He reported that the team is now looking at an early August deadline to return to Earth, with the earliest date being August 2. This would give the agency six weeks to evaluate data from this first test mission and prepare to potentially launch the first test mission with four astronauts in mid-September.
the Reverse analysis – The images shared by Behnken show the stunning views that astronauts experience during their daily work. As SpaceX works to open space flights to more people, it could become a spectacle that an increasing number of people can witness.
While Crew Dragon is sending professional astronauts, firms like Space Adventures and Axiom Space have outlined plans to use SpaceX technology to send regular people into space. The spacecraft, the spacecraft planned to send up to 100 people into space at once, could make views like these practically common.
Update 7/29 12:35 PM EST: An earlier version of this story described both Space Adventures and Axiom Space as “space tourism companies.” Since then it has been updated.
