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Four astronauts successfully used SpaceX Crew Dragon’s “Resilience” to take off on a mission to the International Space Station. Sunday’s takeoff was the first full-fledged US-based NASA mission that sent a crew into orbit aboard a privately owned spacecraft.
SpaceX is owned by billionaire Elon Musk.
Three Americans – Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker – and Japan’s Soichi Noguchi departed at 19:27 (0027 GMT on Monday) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, ending nearly a decade of international dependence on Russia for his runs. Soyuz rockets.
“This is a great day for the United States of America and a great day for Japan,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said at a post-launch press conference.
Twelve minutes after takeoff, at an altitude of 124 miles (200 kilometers) and a speed of 16,800 miles (27,000 kilometers) per hour, the capsule successfully separated from the second stage of the rocket.
“It was an incredible journey,” mission commander Hopkins said from orbit.
SpaceX confirmed that it was on orbit to reach the ISS just over 27 hours later, around 11pm Monday evening (4am GMT Tuesday), joining two Russians and one American aboard the station, and stay for six months.
There was a problem with the cabin temperature control system, but it was fixed quickly.
“It’s working fine,” SpaceX President Glynne Shotwell said at the press conference. But “we will be able to breathe a sigh of relief, in about 26 hours, once we deliver the crew to NASA.”
SpaceX briefly broadcast live images from inside the capsule showing astronauts in their seats, something neither the Russians nor the Americans had done before.
US President-elect Joe Biden hailed the Twitter launch as a “testament to the power of science and what we can achieve by harnessing our innovation, ingenuity and determination,” while President Donald Trump called it “fantastic.”
Vice President Mike Pence, who attended the launch with his wife Karen, called it a “new era in human space exploration in America.”
The Crew Dragon capsule earlier this week became the first spacecraft to be certified by NASA by the Space Shuttle nearly 40 years ago. Its launch vehicle is a reusable SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
At the end of its missions, the Crew Dragon sets up parachutes and then splashes into the water, just like in the Apollo era.
SpaceX is expected to launch two more manned flights to NASA in 2021, including one in the spring, and four cargo-replenishment missions over the next 15 months.
NASA turned to SpaceX and Boeing after closing the checkered Space Shuttle program in 2011, which failed in its primary goals of making space travel convenient and safe.
The agency will have spent more than $ 8 billion on the commercial crew program by 2024, with the hope that the private sector can take care of NASA’s needs in “low earth orbit” so that it is free to focus on missions. back to the Moon and then to Mars.
SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk in 2002, has overtaken its much older rival Boeing, whose program failed after a failed test of its unmanned Starliner last year.
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