SpaceX is about to fly astronauts for a third time

When Megan McArthur’s husband, Bob Behnken, flew to space almost a year ago, she watched from the ground with their 6-yearold son. As an astronaut herself, she was optimistic and proud, especially since it was the first flight of NASA astronauts from U.S. soil in nearly a decade.

But she was also fearful. “One of the hardest things to do is watch the person that you love launch into space,” she said in an interview. “It’s much harder than actually doing it yourself when you’re in the rocket. You have the training. You’re prepared for the mission. When you’re watching, you’re just a spectator. And no matter what happens, there’s nothing you can do to contribute to the situation.”

Now, it’s McArthur’s turn to fly — and Behnken’s turn to spend that fretful time on the ground with their son, now 7.

If all goes well, McArthur will be strapped into SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft along with the rest of the astronauts known as Crew-2 — NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough, Thomas Pesquet of France and Akihiko Hoshide of Japan — for a launch to the International Space Station scheduled for 6:11 a.m. Thursday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The flight will be SpaceX’s third with astronauts aboard. Last May, it flew Behnken and NASA astronaut Doug Hurley in a short test flight to the station. Then, in November, it flew a regular crew of four for a full-duration mission of about six months, restoring regular transportation to the station from U.S. soil after the retirement of the space shuttle fleet in 2011.

That group of astronauts, known as Crew-1, is expected to overlap with Crew-2 on the space station for about a week before coming back to Earth in a return flight scheduled to splash down in the Atlantic Ocean or Gulf of Mexico on April 28.