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- NASA retired its fleet of space shuttles in July 2011, leaving the agency without a rocket or American spacecraft to fly people.
- Since then, NASA has relied entirely on Russia to launch its astronauts to and from the $ 150 billion International Space Station in orbit around Earth.
- But NASA has invested in SpaceX to provide human launch services, and Elon Musk’s rocket company plans to fly its first passengers on May 27: astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley.
- NASA is streaming live YouTube videos of press conferences to preview the manned test flight, called Demo-2.
- Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
May is shaping up to be a landmark month for SpaceX, the rocket company founded by Elon Musk in 2002, and for NASA, which retired its space shuttle fleet in July 2011.
On May 27, despite the weather and technical issues, SpaceX will launch NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley. The seasoned two-person crew will travel to the top of a historic but modernized launch pad at Kennedy Space Center, board the SpaceX’s new Crew Dragon spacecraft, and fly into low Earth orbit on a Falcon 9 rocket. 230 feet tall.
To preview each critical mission detail, called Demo-2, the second of two full test missions, NASA is streaming live video from a series of live press sessions, which you can view using the player. embedded YouTube below.
Demo-2 is critical to SpaceX, NASA, and the United States in general. The mission represents SpaceX’s first human flight in the company’s 18-year history. A successful flight would also mark the resurrection of manned spaceflight from American soil using American spacecraft and rockets for the first time in nearly a decade. (Since the space shuttle fleet retired, NASA has relied on Russia to fly astronauts.)
The mission is a key part of NASA’s public-private partnership with rocket companies like SpaceX and Boeing, called the Commercial Crew Program.
A view of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule on a Falcon 9 rocket in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The spacecraft is part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program to launch astronauts into orbit from American soil.
SpaceX / Twitter
If the weather and hardware cooperate, the two men will take off at 4:32 p.m. ET and launch to the International Space Station (ISS). Once they reach the football-field-sized lab, they will remain there for a “long stay,” though “the specific duration of the mission will be determined,” NASA said in an announcement last month.
“For the first time since 2011, we are about to launch American astronauts from American rockets on American soil,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine in August 2018 during the astronauts debut of the commercial crew.
For his part, Musk seemed excited but exasperated at the time it took for his rocket company to reach this critical juncture.
“Good progress, but 18 years to launch our first humans is a long time,” Musk tweeted April 17. “Technology must move faster or there will be no city on the red planet in our lives.”
Musk is looking for such a city on Mars by developing a huge, inexpensive, fast, and fully reusable launch system called Starship at a nascent (and controversial) development, test, and launch site in South Texas.
On Thursday, NASA announced that SpaceX (and its Starship vehicle) was a candidate to return astronauts from the space agency to the lunar surface as part of its Artemis program.
Watch NASA’s pre-mission briefings on SpaceX’s first human space flight
NASA plans to broadcast its first briefing at 11 a.m. ET.
After the YouTube player embedded below, there is a complete NASA television show on what the agency plans to broadcast and when it is related to the Demo-2 mission.
Demo-2 press session schedule for Friday May 1:
- 11am. ET (15:00 UTC) – Summary of Commercial Crew and International Space Station Program – Johnson Space Center / NASA Headquarters / Kennedy Space Center
- 12:30 pm. ET (16:30 UTC) – SpaceX Demonstration Mission-2 Commercial Crew Program Briefing – Johnson Space Center / Hawthorne, California
- 1:30 in the afternoon. ET (17:30 UTC) – B-Roll video of NASA / SpaceX Demo-2 crew training (Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken)
- 2 p.m. ET (18:00 UTC) – Commercial Crew Program SpaceX-2 Demonstration Mission News Conference (NASA Crews Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken) – Johnson Space Centers)
- 3: 40-4: 50 p.m. ET (19: 40-20: 50 UTC) – Live interviews with NASA SpaceX / Crew Dragon spacecraft commander Doug Hurley
- 5: 25-6: 05 p.m. ET (21: 25-22: 05 UTC) – Live interviews with NASA’s SpaceX / Crew Dragon Joint Operations Commander Bob Behnken
- 9-11 p.m. ET (01: 00-03: 00 UTC May 2) – Replays of previous broadcasts.
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