The two astronauts are on the SpaceX test flight to the International Space Station. Boeing's spaceship, the Starliner capsule, is not expected to fly astronauts until early 2021.Ī SpaceX Falcon 9, with NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken in the Dragon crew capsule, prepare to lift off as the vehicle vents fuel, from Pad 39-A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Saturday, May 30, 2020. Over the past few years, NASA outsourced the job of designing and building its next generation of spaceships to SpaceX and Boeing, awarding them $7 billion in contracts in a public-private partnership aimed at driving down costs and spurring innovation.
astronauts to and from the space station. Ever since it retired the space shuttle in 2011, NASA has relied on Russian spaceships launched from Kazakhstan to take U.S. The flight also ended a nine-year launch drought for NASA. For the first time in nearly a decade, astronauts will blast into orbit aboard an American rocket from American soil, a first for a private company. The two astronauts will fly on a SpaceX test flight to the International Space Station. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building on their way to Pad 39-A, at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Saturday, May 30, 2020. NASA astronauts Douglas Hurley, left, and Robert Behnken wave as they exit the Neil A. NASA officials and others expressed hope the flight would lift American spirits and show the world what the U.S. over the case of George Floyd, the handcuffed black man who died at the hands of Minneapolis police. The mission unfolded amid the gloom of the coronavirus outbreak, which has killed more than 100,000 Americans, and racial unrest across the U.S. The two men are scheduled to arrive Sunday at the International Space Station, 250 miles above Earth, for a stay of up to four months, after which they will come home with a Right Stuff-style splashdown at sea, something the world hasn't witnessed since the 1970s. "Let's light this candle," Hurley said just before ignition, borrowing the historic words used by Alan Shepard on America's first human spaceflight, in 1961. Minutes later, they slipped safely into orbit. from the same launch pad used to send Apollo crews to the moon a half-century ago. NASA's Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken rode skyward aboard a white-and-black, bullet-shaped Dragon capsule on top of a Falcon 9 rocket, lifting off at 3:22 p.m.
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