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NASA astronauts Robert Behnken, left, and Douglas Hurley.
SpaceX
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told reporters on Friday that first launch of astronauts to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX spacecraft, an event scheduled for May 27, is “a priority” for the space agency.
It’s a statement I’d expect to hear from the NASA chief, but it had special meaning during the first of three press conferences on Fridays by the agency, due to the environment where Bridenstine spoke. The administrator joined the conference call from his home in Tulsa, Oklahoma, instead of NASA headquarters due to the coronavirus pandemic That has many Americans working from home.
Much of daily life in the United States is currently closed due to COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. But both SpaceX and NASA say they are on target to send humans into orbit from U.S. soil for the first time since the end of the space shuttle program in 2011.
Called Demo-2, the mission will see NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken take off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida inside a Crew Dragon capsule on a Falcon 9 rocket. The pair will fly to the ISS, where they will join the crew there for a time before returning the Dragon to Earth to complete the demo mission.
SpaceX chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell said the company has been training and working with Hurley and Behnken for years. She described the duo as “rough, but also dads and husbands.”
Shotwell said there is still work to do for the next four weeks, including a final parachute test scheduled for later on Friday, and that she is looking forward to launch day.
“I will feel a little relief when they are in orbit … I will start sleeping again when they are safe on the planet.”
Bridenstine said Demo-2 is an important step towards the near future in which NASA and others will greatly expand the human footprint in space. Visualize multiple commercial space stations in orbit and a permanent presence on the moon.
“The moon is the testing ground for fate, and fate, of course, is Mars.”
He said NASA has been working with SpaceX on its next generation of Starship, which CEO Elon Musk hopes will one day bring humans to Mars.
But first NASA has to launch astronauts into an entirely new spacecraft for the first time since 1981.
Bridenstine said the event should be a cause for a spectacular celebration, but due to the pandemic, he asked people to watch from home rather than come to Florida to try to catch the launch in person.
“I ask people not to travel to the Kennedy Space Center,” he said. “That saddens me even to say it.”
NASA will host two other press events on Friday, with the agency’s program managers and SpaceX going into more detail about the mission. The final press event, scheduled for 11 a.m. PT will allow journalists to ask questions of Behnken and Hurley. You can see it all through CNET’s live stream above.
