Nasa, SpaceX eye historic spaceflight despite pandemic

washington — Nasa and SpaceX said on Friday they were pressing ahead with plans to launch astronauts to space from US soil for the first time in nearly a decade later on this month, despite the coronavirus pandemic.

Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley, both veterans of the Space Shuttle programme that was shuttered in 2011, will blast off from the Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida on May 27.

Should the mission succeed, the US will have achieved its goal of no longer having to buy seats on Russian Soyuz rockets to give its astronauts rides to the International Space Station (ISS).

It is also an important stage in Nasa’s new economic model: the space agency has spent billions on contracts with both SpaceX and Boeing to develop spaceships that will each have to make six round trips to the ISS.

The model is supposed to save taxpayers from financial black holes of past programmes, as well as some still to come — notably the giant Space Launch System rocket that is supposed to take Nasa back to the Moon but is plagued by cost overrun and scheduling delays.

Nasa administrator Jim Bridenstine told reporters that the SpaceX Crew

Dragon capsule will be only the fifth class of US spacecraft to take humans into orbit, after the storied Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Space Shuttle programmes.

“If you look globally, this will be the ninth time in history when we put humans on a brand new spacecraft,” said Bridenstine.

“We’re going to do it here in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. I’m going to tell you this is a high priority mission for the United States of America,” he added.

Behnken and Hurley, who have been training for the “Demo-2” mission for years, will dock with the International Space Station (ISS) and remain there for between one to four months, depending on when the next mission takes place, said Nasa’s Steve Stich. Crew Dragon is able to remain in orbit for around four months (119 days).

Hurley, who was the pilot on the last Space Shuttle mission, admitted it was “disappointing” that the launch won’t be a public affair, with crowds discouraged from gathering at Cape Canaveral to witness the spectacle. “We won’t have the luxury of our family and friends being there at Kennedy to watch the launch but it’s obviously, the right thing to do in the current environment,” he said. —