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Milestone trip to space station for 4 astronauts
The Dragon capsule is scheduled to arrive at about 11pm Eastern time on Monday, more than 27 hours after blasting off from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Four astronauts are cruising to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX capsule in the company’s first regular Nasa mission to the facility.
The Dragon capsule is scheduled to arrive at about 11pm Eastern time on Monday, more than 27 hours after blasting off from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Dragon was performing as expected in orbit and would approach the station and dock as programmed, said Kathy Lueders, the Nasa associate administrator.
“It was a beautiful launch,” she said late on Sunday after the launch, adding that she was “a little bit shook up” with excitement.
Three Americans - Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker - and Japan’s Soichi Noguchi blasted off from the launch site, ending almost a decade of international reliance on Russia for rides on its Soyuz rockets.
The Crew-1 mission marks a crucial milestone in the development of a space industry in which private-sector companies provide business and tourism services in low-earth orbit. Following the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011, Nasa awarded Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Boeing nearly $7 billion in contracts to build new transport systems to the space station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew programme.
“A great launch!” said US President Donald Trump in a tweet. President-elect Joe Biden called it “a testament to the power of science and what we can accomplish by harnessing our innovation”.
SpaceX’s first operational trip to the orbital lab followed a test flight with a two-person crew that returned to the planet three months ago. The latest launch occurred 18 years after Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies with the ultimate goal of populating other planets.
The Crew-1 mission launched two days after officials at the Nasa determined that Musk, who may be infected with coronavirus, had no physical interactions with key personnel. Musk tweeted on Sunday morning that he had “no symptoms right now” after saying a day earlier that he “most likely” has a moderate case of Covid-19.
