Mission 10 years in the making
CAPE CANAVERAL: Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX launched four astronauts on a flight to the International Space Station yesterday, Nasa’s first fullfledged mission sending a crew into orbit aboard a privately owned spacecraft.
SpaceX’s newly designed Crew Dragon capsule, which the crew has dubbed Resilience, lifted off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 1.27pm yesterday NZ time from Nasa’s
Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
‘‘That was one heck of a ride,’’' astronaut Mike Hopkins said from Crew Dragon to SpaceX mission control about an hour after liftoff.
‘‘There was a lot of smiles.’’ The Resilience crew includes Hopkins and two fellow Nasa astronauts, mission pilot Victor Glover and physicist Shannon Walker. They were joined by Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, making his third trip to space after previously flying on the US shuttle in 2005 and Soyuz in 2009.
Nasa is calling the flight its first ‘‘operational’’ mission for a rocket and crewvehicle system that was 10 years in the making.
It represents a new era of commercially developed spacecraft, owned and operated by a private entity rather than Nasa, for sending Americans into orbit. — Reuters