The first SpaceX capsule astronaut flight will take place on May 27

SpaceX will send two American astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) on May 27 in their new Crew Dragon capsule, the NASA chief announced Friday.

It will be the first manned flight launched from the United States in nearly 10 years.

“On May 27, NASA will again launch US astronauts aboard a US spacecraft from US territory,” Jim Bridenstine, administrator of the space agency, tweeted.

Since July 2011, Americans have relied on Russian ships to go to the ISS.

NASA planned the month of May for the mission and kept its calendar despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

Astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley have been training for years for this mission that the United States is waiting impatiently to stop depending on Russia.

They will travel in the Crew Dragon capsule, an adapted version of the Dragon loading capsule that since 2012 supplies material and food to the ISS, and which will connect to SpaceX Falcon 9.

Takeoff is scheduled for May 27 at 4:32 p.m. (8:32 p.m. GMT, 5:32 p.m. Brasilia time), at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, from the same space in which the Apollo astronauts they left for the moon.

Approximately 24 hours later, they must be connected to the ISS. The duration of his mission, however, has not been defined. There is currently one American and two Russians at the station.

The mission will be historic for NASA, which has left spacecraft manufacturing behind. After transporting American astronauts for 30 years, in which two exploded, they stopped working in 2011.

Later, NASA decided to change its operating model and entrust the industry with the development of its next vehicles, maintaining strict supervision and largely financing its construction.

SpaceX and giant Boeing were chosen and received billions of dollars from NASA. SpaceX developed the Crew Dragon and Boeing, the Starliner.

Boeing, however, failed. A test mission in December had technical and communication problems, and its Starliner is expected to make a new unmanned flight.

Billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, which also founded the Tesla electric vehicle factory, could become the first private company to bring astronauts into space.

Crew Dragon carried out a successful mission with a mannequin on board in March 2019, in which he joined the ISS, more than 400 kilometers from Earth. He spent six days there, before falling into the Atlantic with the help of a parachute, as well as Apollo’s capsules.