Years upon years of SpaceX efforts come down to this: the company’s first launch of a crewed spaceship to the International Space Station. You can watch the event in the live NASA feed attached at the bottom of this text.
UPDATE: today's launch has been canceled on account of the weather: "Standing down from launch today due to unfavorable weather in the flight path," SpaceX said. Another attempt will be made on Saturday.
At the time of this writing, the clock reads T minus 1 hour until liftoff, and all across the world people are either holding their fingers crossed or their breath awaiting for it all to unfold.
The Falcon 9 rocket carrying Crew Dragon is scheduled to take off at 4:33 EDT (8:33 AM GMT) from the historic Launch Complex 39A at the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida. On board, the two astronauts in their brand new costumes are seated at their stations, awaiting for the go for launch signal.
The two are joint operations commander Robert Behnken and spacecraft commander Douglas Hurley. Their historic mission, officially called Demo-2, is to validate the SpaceX-designed spacecraft for future crewed launches and to literally open a whole new chapter in space exploration.
The success of the mission could mean the start of a new space race, this time not restricted to a select few, but in the more distant future available to civilians as well.
Before that happens, though, Demo-2 will have to prove it can safely take humans off planet Earth and into space, and at a later date return them safely home.
For the American space program, the success of the mission would mean a return to crewed space operations from home soil since the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011. If validated for “operational, long-duration missions to the space station,” Crew Dragon and the Falcon 9 rocket would effectively end the American dependence on Russian spacecraft.
Attached below is the NASA livestream of the historic launch taking place on May 27, 2020 in Florida, USA.
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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