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It’s still not the same as hopping on a commuter flight from New York to Washington or renting a car from Avis, but Sunday’s launch of four astronauts to the International Space Station in a SpaceX-built capsule was an important step toward carrying out common space travel.
In the future, instead of relying on government-run spacecraft, NASA astronauts and anyone else with enough money will be able to buy a ticket on a commercial rocket.
NASA designated the launch on Sunday night as the first operational flight of the Crew Dragon spacecraft built and operated by SpaceX, the rocket company founded by Elon Musk. The four astronauts aboard – three from NASA and one from JAXA, the Japanese space agency – left Earth from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
A Crew Dragon brought two astronauts – Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley – to the space station in May, but that was a test flight to eliminate remaining flaws in the systems.
The four astronauts on this flight are Michael S. Hopkins, Shannon Walker and Victor J. Glover of NASA and Soichi Noguchi, a Japanese astronaut.
Last week NASA and SpaceX completed the certification process, which provides the space agency’s seal of approval that SpaceX has met the set specifications to regularly bring NASA astronauts into orbit. This launch, known as Crew-1, is a regularly scheduled trip to take four crew members for a six-month stay at the space station.
“It marks the end of the system development phase,” Phil McAlister, director of commercial space flight development at NASA, said Thursday in a telephone interview with reporters. “For the first time in history, there is a commercial ability on the part of a private sector entity to transport people into space safely and reliably.”
Despite the uncertain weather – forecasts only gave a 50-50 chance of favorable conditions for the launch pad – the sky remained quite clear. At 7:27 pm Eastern time, the nine engines of the Falcon 9 rocket fired with a roar and illuminated the night sky as the rocket flew over the Atlantic Ocean.
After moving away from the second stage, which continued to orbit, the Booster Falcon 9 spun and landed on a floating platform. SpaceX now, of course, retrieves and reuses boosters. The same rocket stage will be used to launch the next quartet of astronauts on the space station next spring.
The Crew Dragon, called Resilience, is expected to dock Monday around 11 p.m. after a 27.5-hour journey, as the capsule reaches the space station, which travels at more than 17,000 miles per hour.
When Mr. Glover arrives, he will become the first black astronaut to serve as a member of the station’s crew in the past 20 years that people have lived aboard the International Space Station. Other black astronauts had already been aboard the space station, but were there for shorter stays during the space shuttle missions that helped mount the orbiting outpost.
Asked during a press conference on Monday about his thoughts on how to make history, Mr. Glover modestly nodded to the meaning.
“It is something to celebrate once we accomplish it, and I am honored to be in this position and to be part of this fantastic and experienced crew,” he said. “And I can’t wait to get up there and do my best to make sure, you know, that I’m worthy of all the work that has been done to prepare us for this mission. You know, unlike elections – which are in the past or which are retreating in the past – this mission is still before me. So, let’s go there and I’ll talk to you after I get on board. “
He also said last week in an interview with The Christian Chronicle, a publication of the Churches of Christ, that the milestone was “bittersweet”.
“I’ve had some great colleagues before me who could have really done it, and there are some great people going behind me,” Glover said. “I wish it had already been done, but I try not to draw too much attention to it.”
Charles F. Bolden Jr., who served as NASA administrator under President Barack Obama, said that while Mr. Glover was making history, he shouldn’t feel overwhelmed.
“Many of us have had the opportunity to try to talk to him regularly and try to help him put him at ease and help him understand that he is not carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders,” said Mr. Bolden, who is also black and spent nearly 700 hours in space as a NASA astronaut. “He shouldn’t feel unusual responsibility because he’s black. He should just go and be another crew member and have fun. “
On Sunday afternoon, as the astronauts prepared for launch, they were visited by Jim Bridenstine, the current NASA administrator, and Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX president and chief operating officer.
For Mr. Bridenstine, this was the last astronaut launch he would see as a leader of NASA. In an interview last week with Aviation Week magazine, Mr. Bridenstine said he will not remain in his current role after the inauguration, even if requested by the incoming Biden administration.
Mr. Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, remained in hiding after saying he “most likely” had a “moderate case” of Covid-19.
The four astronauts who took off on Sunday will join three others already at the space station: Kate Rubins from NASA and two Russians, Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov.
They will do what astronauts have been doing over the past two decades on the space station: supervise science experiments, perform maintenance tasks, and talk to students on the ground.
Astronauts, for example, will collect their own biological samples to help scientists in the field study how dietary changes affect the body. They will also grow radishes, the latest experiment to explore whether food can be grown in space. (Red lettuce and mizuna mustard are among the first foods astronauts have studied.) They will also test whether fungi can break apart asteroid rock and help extract useful metals – a scientific prelude to extraterrestrial mining operations and a sequel. to a similar, successful experiment that used bacteria.
With Crew Dragon entering operational status, the space station crew can be increased to seven. After the withdrawal of the space shuttles, the Russian Soyuz spacecraft was the only means for astronauts to travel to and from the space station. The Soyuz has only three seats and also doubles as an emergency lifeboat: with two Soyuz ships anchored at the station, the maximum crew size was six.
But for now, the space station only has six astronauts sleeping places, not seven. “We are currently short of crew quarters aboard the station,” Mr Hopkins said during a press conference on Monday.
Mr. Hopkins, the SpaceX crew commander, said he could sleep in the Crew Dragon instead.
Katherine J. Wu contributed to the report.
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