When NASA and Space X launch the Crew Dragon “Resilience”, it will be a number of firsts.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is poised to send a crew of FOUR astronauts NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Soichi Noguchi to the International Space Station on Sunday evening in NASA’s first operational mission using the Crew Dragon capsule. Since the Shuttle missions NASA has been contracting to Russian companies to launch into space, now it’s all American again.
The Crew Dragon capsule, named “Resilience” by its crew, is due to launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 7:27 p.m. ET on Sunday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida carrying three U.S. astronauts — Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker — and one from Japan, Soichi Noguchi.
The roughly eight-hour flight to the station will be SpaceX’s first operational mission, as opposed to a test, after NASA officials this week signed off on Crew Dragon’s design, ending a nearly 10-year development phase for SpaceX under the agency’s public-private crew program.
“The history being made this time is we’re launching what we call an operational flight to the International Space Station,” NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said during a press conference at Kennedy Space Center.
NASA contracted SpaceX and Boeing in 2014 to develop competing space capsules aimed at replacing its shuttle program that ended in 2011 and weaning off dependence on Russian rockets to send U.S. astronauts to space.
SpaceX’s final test of its capsule came in August, after the company launched and returned the first astronauts from U.S. soil on a trip to the ISS in nearly a decade.
Boeing’s first crewed test mission with its Starliner capsule is planned for late next year.
