NASA and Elon Musk’s commercial rocket company SpaceX launched a four astronaut team on a flight to the International Space Station on this Friday, the first crew ever propelled into the orbit by a rocket booster recycled from a previous spaceflight.
The company's Crew Dragon capsule Endeavour, making its second flight, streaked into darkened pre-dawn sky atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as its nine Merlin engines roared to life at 5:49 AM (0949 GMT) from the NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
An explosion from Cape Canaveral was shown live on NASA TV.
The crew is expected to arrive at the space station, circling about 250 kilometers above the Earth, on Saturday morning following a flight of about 23 hours. Along the way they will have time to eat from pre-packaged food and snacks and sleep less.
Within 10 minutes of launching it, the second batch of rockets had already delivered a crew capsule to Earth orbit, traveling at about 17,000 miles an hour, according to observers.
The first rocket stage, at the same time, descended back to Earth and landed safely on the Atlantic landing platform on a drone boat called Course I Still Love You.
The campaign marks the second group of "operational" space station launched by NASA on the Crew Dragon spacecraft since human flights began landing on American soil last year, following a nine-year hiatus at the end of the 2011 US shuttle space program.
It is also the third integrated aircraft launched to fly in 11 months under NASA's new public and private partnership with SpaceX, a rocket company founded in 2002 by Musk, who is also CEO of electric car maker Tesla Inc (TSLA.O).
The first was an external and rear exploration mission carrying only two spacecraft orbiting last May, followed by a small SpaceX flight of four-member space station staff in November.
"The future looks bright. I think we are at the beginning of a new era of space exploration," said the billionaire businessman at a forum with NASA officials after watching the release of funds from the launch control.
The Crew 2 team comprised two NASA astronauts - mission chief Shane Kimbrough, 53, and pilot Megan McArthur, 49 - and Japanese actor Akihiko Hoshide, 52, and mechanical engineer Thomas Pesquet, 43, a French engineer from Europe Space Agency.
A video camera mounted inside the capsule crew showed four astronauts wearing helmets, wearing white airplanes and black boots, sitting next to the capsule controls at the beginning of their journey.
About two hours later, relaxing in their lightweight position, they held a brief visit to the NASA TV listener's cabin.
"The ride was going well, and we wouldn't have asked for anything better," McArthur said. "I hope you enjoyed this show."
Pesquet held the camera to one of the capsule windows, giving viewers a glimpse of Madagascar on the trail.
LONG-TERM GOAL
They are expected to spend about six months on the research platform conducting scientific experiments and preserving them before returning to Earth. The four members of Crew 1, who were sent to space in November, are expected to return home on April 28.
The Crew 2 mission made a bit of spaceflight history because its Falcon 9 rocket exploded with the first phase booster that lifted Crew 1 in orbit five months ago, which was the first time that the booster had previously flown - used in a fictional launch. .
Renewable vehicles, designed to take them back to Earth and stay safe rather than fall into the sea after launch, are at the heart of the versatile RockX strategy that has helped pioneers make spaceflight more economical.
SpaceX has installed a number of Falcon 9 booster return landings, and the company has refurbished and re-used most of them, some of the many aircraft. But all those planes, until Friday’s mission, only carried cargo.
The Crew 2 pilot, McArthur, made history as the first female Crew Dragon pilot and the second person in her family to board the SpaceX capsule. She is married to NASA astronaut Bob Behnken, who took a SpaceX spacecraft with her astronaut colleague Doug Hurley last year. The same Crew Dragon was also used for that aircraft.
If all goes well, Crew 2 will be received at the airport on Saturday by four Crew 1 astronauts - three from NASA and one from Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency JAXA. Two Russian astronauts and a U.S. astronaut Soyuz's flight attendants also entered the space station.
Posts
