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The Dragon rocket successfully took off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for its mission to the International Space Station.
The crew was launched by Elon Musk-owned private transportation provider SpaceX today at 11.27 AEST.
It is only the second time that the dragon and its Falcon rocket have been used to send people into space.
NASA has described the precise launch time as an “instant launch window,” which means the mission must leave on point if it is to capture the station as it circled the Earth.
The launch of three Americans and one Japanese – all but one of them former space station residents – comes just three months after a pair of NASA test pilots successfully concluded the first SpaceX-occupied flight of a crew capsule. Dragon.
“Game day!” tweeted NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins, the crew commander.
The crew led by Hopkins, a US Air Force colonel, includes physicist Shannon Walker and Navy commander and novice astronaut Victor Glover, who will be the first black astronaut to spend a long time aboard the space station. – from five to six months.
Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi will become only the third person to launch into orbit aboard three different types of spacecraft.
It also marked only the second time in nearly a decade that astronauts have been set to launch into orbit from the United States.
As neighboring cities braced for an onslaught of onlookers, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk revealed via Twitter that he “most likely” has a moderate case of coronavirus, despite mixed test results.
NASA’s policy is that anyone who tests positive for the virus must quarantine and remain isolated.
Musk remained optimistic. “Launch of the astronauts today!” she tweeted Sunday morning, adding that last week she had symptoms of a minor cold, but at the moment she was feeling “pretty normal”.
The astronauts named their capsule Resilience given all the challenges of 2020, especially the global pandemic.
The rough seas prompted SpaceX to delay launch by a day so that its booster-landing platform would reach its correct position in the Atlantic. The company plans to reuse the first stage booster for the next crew launch next spring.
NASA has turned to private companies to transport cargo and crews to the space station, after the 2011 retirement of its space shuttles. The space agency will save millions of people by no longer needing to buy seats on Russian Soyuz capsules.
NASA’s other crew transportation provider, Boeing, has not yet launched the astronauts. The company is still working to overcome software problems following the ruined space debut of its Starliner capsule last December.
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