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Despite the coronary virus pandemic, the US space agency NASA and the space company SpaceX stick to their plan to send astronauts from the United States to the International Space Station for the first time in ten years. “We will do this in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic,” NASA chief Jim Bridenstine told reporters yesterday. Mission was a high priority for the United States.
A SpaceX space capsule of the “Crew Dragon” type is designed to launch the two American astronauts Bob Behnken and Douglas Hurley. The launch is scheduled for May 27 from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Bridenstine advised against coming to the Kennedy Space Center on the occasion of the pandemic. “It saddens me to say that. I wish we could do something really spectacular.”
Space Shuttle Program Discontinued in 2011
Behnken and Hurley, who have been preparing for the mission for years, are said to remain on the ISS for one to four months. Since the United States discontinued its space shuttle program in 2011, it had relied on Russian Soyuz rockets to transport astronauts to the ISS. Therefore, NASA commissioned SpaceX and its competitor Boeing to build space shuttles for astronauts. SpaceX is a company of technology pioneer Elon Musk, which also owns electric car maker Tesla.
The current mission is a milestone for SpaceX. The company has flown to the ISS a total of 15 times since 2012, but has so far only performed supply flights with its Falcon 9 launch vehicle. In March 2019, SpaceX successfully sent its “Crew Dragon” space capsule to the ISS for the first time, but still unmanned. There was only one doll in the spacesuit in the capsule.
