Four astronauts reached orbit in a SpaceX rocket after taking off at 7:27 pm from Florida, on the NASA company’s first regular mission to the International Space Station. Sunday’s launch appeared to go according to plan as the Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The first stage of the rocket successfully landed on a drone about nine minutes after takeoff.
The Dragon will transport astronauts to the space station on SpaceX’s first operational trip following a test flight with a two-person crew that returned from the orbiting laboratory three months ago.
The latest launch, known as the Crew-1 mission, comes 18 years after Elon Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies Corp. with the ultimate goal of populating other planets. The Crew-1 mission marks a crucial milestone in the development of a space industry in which private sector companies provide commercial and tourism services in low Earth orbit. Following the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011, NASA awarded SpaceX and Boeing Co. nearly $ 7 billion in contracts to build new transportation systems to the space station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew program. The launch was originally scheduled for Saturday, but was mopped up due to bad weather.
On the Crew-1 mission, Major Michael Hopkins, 51, an Air Force colonel and test pilot, will make his second trip to the space station, seven years after his first. He will be joined by three others on the mission:
- Shannon Walker, 55, a physicist and native of Houston, will be serving her second term in the orbital lab.
- Victor Glover, 44, a pilot in the California Navy, will make his first flight into space. It will be the first black astronaut to stay on the space station for a full six-month rotation, according to NASA.
- Soichi Noguchi, 55, a Japanese astronaut and aeronautical engineer, has the most space experience among the crew and will become one of the few people to leave Earth in three vehicles: Russia’s Soyuz, Space Shuttle, and SpaceX Dragon. .
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