Elon Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, made history on Saturday, May 30, when its Crew Dragon capsule safely reached space carrying two NASA astronauts. It was the first time a private company put a human into orbit.
On Sunday, May 31, Crew Dragon went on to successfully dock with the International Space Station (ISS), which the astronauts are now safely aboard.
The historic launch marks the first time that NASA astronauts have blasted off from American soil since the Space Shuttle Program ended in 2011.
Appropriately, that final flight of space shuttle Atlantis was piloted by astronaut Doug Hurley, who commanded Saturday’s Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission. He was accompanied by fellow astronaut Robert Behnken. Together, the two will now spend a yet-to-be-determined amount of time onboard the ISS.
Launch America
For nearly a decade, NASA has bought seats on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to reach the International Space Station, which was built with roughly $200 billion of U.S. taxpayer’s money, according to some estimates. And to celebrate the return of crewed U.S. launches, the space agency promoted Saturday’s event as “Launch America.”
“This is a unique opportunity to bring all of America together in one moment in time and say look at how bright the future is. That's what this launch is all about,” NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said at a press briefing earlier in the week.
Roughly 10 million people watched Crew Dragon’s launch online and on television, as the event was livestreamed and carried by all the major TV news networks. In 2019, over 100,000 people had traveled to Cape Canaveral in Florida for the prior, uncrewed demonstration flight. The crowds at the Kennedy Space Center on Saturday were significantly smaller this time around as a result of social distancing restrictions in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nonetheless, a palpable silence, followed by raucous cheers, rang out at Launch Pad 39A as the astronauts reached orbit. The same launch site was used to vault the Apollo missions to the moon and space shuttle flights into orbit.