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It’s not yet the same as taking a shuttle flight from New York to Washington or renting a car from Avis, but Sunday’s launch of four astronauts to the International Space Station in a capsule built by SpaceX was a important step towards the trivialization of space travel.
In the future, instead of relying on government-run spacecraft, NASA astronauts and anyone else with enough cash will be able to buy a ticket for a commercial rocket.
NASA has named Sunday night’s launch as the first operational flight of the Crew Dragon spacecraft built and operated by SpaceX, the rocket company launched by Elon Musk. The four astronauts on board – three from NASA and one from JAXA, the Japanese space agency – have left Earth from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
A Crew Dragon took two astronauts – Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley – to the space station in May, but it was a test flight to eliminate the remaining problems in the systems.
The four astronauts on this flight are Michael S. Hopkins, Shannon Walker and Victor J. Glover of NASA, and Soichi Noguchi, a Japanese astronaut.
NASA and SpaceX last week completed the certification process, which provides the space agency’s seal of approval that SpaceX has met specifications set to regularly bring NASA astronauts into orbit. This launch, known as Crew-1, is a regularly scheduled trip to take four crew members for a six-month stay at the space station.
“This marks the end of the development phase of the system,” Phil McAlister, director of commercial spaceflight development at NASA, said Thursday in a telephone interview with reporters. “For the first time in history, there is a commercial capacity of a private sector entity to transport people safely and reliably through space.”
Despite uncertain weather – the forecast only gave a 50-50 chance of favorable launch pad conditions – the sky remained fairly clear. At 7:27 p.m. EST, the nine engines of the Falcon 9 rocket came to life and illuminated the night sky as the rocket rose above the Atlantic Ocean.
After moving away from the second stage, which continued to spin in orbit, the Falcon 9 booster flipped over and landed on a floating platform. SpaceX now naturally collects and reuses boosters. That same rocket stage will be used to launch the next quartet of astronauts to the space station next spring.
The Crew Dragon, named Resilience, is expected to dock around 11 p.m. on Monday after a 27.5-hour journey as the capsule catches up to the space station, which travels at more than 27,000 km / h.
When Mr. Glover arrives, he will become the first black astronaut to be part of the station’s crew in the 20 years people have lived aboard the International Space Station. Other black astronauts were previously aboard the space station, but they were there for shorter stays on space shuttle missions that helped assemble the orbiting outpost.
Asked at a press conference Monday about his thoughts on the story, Mr. Glover modestly nodded at the importance.
“It’s something to celebrate once we’ve accomplished it, and I’m honored to be in this position and to be a part of this great and experienced crew,” he said. “And I can’t wait to get there and do my best to make sure, you know, that we are worthy of all the work that has been put in place to prepare us for this mission. You know, unlike the election – which is in the past or has receded in the past – this mission is still ahead of me. So let’s go, and I’ll talk to you once on board.
He also said last week in an interview with The Christian Chronicle, a publication of the Churches of Christ, that the milestone was “bittersweet.”
“I have had amazing colleagues before me who really could have done it, and there are amazing people who will follow me,” said Glover. “I wish it had been done already, but I’m trying not to draw too much attention to this.”
Charles F. Bolden Jr., who was a NASA administrator under President Barack Obama, said if Mr. Glover was making history, he shouldn’t feel overwhelmed.
“Many of us have had the opportunity to try to talk to him regularly and try to help him feel comfortable and help him understand that he is not carrying the weight of the world. on his shoulders, ”said Bolden, who is also black and has spent nearly 700 hours in space as a NASA astronaut. “He shouldn’t feel any unusual responsibility because he’s black. He should just go and be another crew member and have a good time.
On Sunday afternoon, as the astronauts prepared for the launch, they were visited by Jim Bridenstine, current NASA administrator, and Gwynne Shotwell, president and chief operating officer of SpaceX.
For Mr. Bridenstine, it was the last astronaut launch he considered the head of NASA. In an interview last week with Aviation Week magazine, Mr Bridenstine said he would not stay in his current role after the nomination, even if the new Biden administration asked him to.
Mr Musk, the chief executive of SpaceX, remained out of sight, after saying he “very likely” had a “moderate case” of Covid-19.
The four astronauts who took off on Sunday will join three others already at the space station: Kate Rubins from NASA and two Russians, Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov.
They will do what astronauts have been doing for two decades on the space station: overseeing science experiments, performing maintenance tasks, and talking to students in the field.
Astronauts, for example, will collect their own biological samples to help scientists in the field study how dietary changes affect the body. They will also grow radishes, the latest experiment to explore if food can be grown in space. (The leaves of red lettuce and mizuna mustard are among the first foods the astronauts studied.) They will also check to see if the fungi can break up asteroid rock and help extract useful metals – a scientific prelude to alien mining operations, and a follow-up to a similar one. , successful experiment using bacteria.
With Crew Dragon entering the operational state, the space station’s crew can be increased to seven. After the space shuttles retired, the Russian Soyuz spacecraft was the only way for astronauts to get to the space station and to come back. The Soyuz has only three seats and also serves as an emergency lifeboat – with two Soyuz spacecraft docked at the station, the maximum crew size was six.
But at the moment, the space station only has seats for six astronauts, not seven. “We are currently short of a quarter of the crew aboard the station,” Hopkins told a conference. press release Monday.
Mr. Hopkins, the SpaceX crew commander, said he could sleep in the Crew Dragon instead.
Katherine J. Wu contributed reporting.
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