Monday, November 16, 2020

SpaceX Launches First Official NASA Crew Mission To ISS

Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX has successfully launched its first full, NASA astronaut mission to the International Space Station, sending the NASA Crew-1 mission into space on Sunday. The crewed astronaut mission--which followed an earlier, demonstration crew mission--put astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker, and Soichi Noguchi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) into space at 7:27 p.m. ET aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon. The mission to the ISS is expected to take 27.5 hours, and they are expected to spend the next six months working on science at the International Space Station once they arrive. NASA says that the Crew-1 mission is the first crew rotation flight of a U.S. commercial spacecraft with astronauts to the space station following the spacecraft system's official human rating certification. The crew will join three other astronauts who are already onboard the ISS at the moment.