After building anticipation to unbearable levels, NASA and SpaceX pulled the plug on the Crew Dragon launch scheduled for May 27 at the last minute, with under an hour remaining until ignition. The cause for the cancelation was the weather.
Today, May 30, NASA and SpaceX will try to launch again, and we surely hope all the pieces fall in their right place and allow this to happen. Lift-off is scheduled for Saturday (May 30) at 3:22 pm EDT (19:22 pm GMT) from Launch Complex 39A at the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The launch will be broadcast as all other historic NASA missions on the agency’s YouTube channel. You can watch it here as well, attached below this text.
The anticipated mission is called Demo-2, and it’s the first crewed flight of the SpaceX-designed Crew Dragon spacecraft, taken up the International Space Station with the help of the SpaceX Falcon 9.
Two men are on board this historic mission, joint operations commander Robert Behnken and spacecraft commander Douglas Hurley.
The two are tasked with evaluating first hand how the spacecraft behaves and whether it is safe to be used on future missions as well. If all is in order, NASA will validate the spacecraft for “operational, long-duration missions to the space station” and effectively open a new chapter in space exploration.
The launch of the Crew Dragon will mark the return of crewed space mission to American soil for the first time since the retirement of the space shuttle.
NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said earlier on Saturday the success of the mission would not mean the end of the collaboration with the Russian Space Agency, and there’s still a possibility of the Soyuz being used to launch Americans.
If successful, NASA is also considering sending Russian astronauts to the ISS using Crew Dragon.
Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies. Full profile
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