SpaceX launches first Nasa astronauts from American soil since 2011

Elon Musk was “overcome with emotion” after SpaceX, the company he founded in 2002, became the first commercial company to launch a rocket carrying humans into orbit, ushering in a new era in space travel. SpaceX’s two-stage Falcon 9 rocket with Nasa astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley aboard blasted off flawlessly on Saturday from Florida’s Kennedy Space Centre for the 19-hour voyage to the space station. “Let’s light this candle,” Hurley, the mission commander, told SpaceX mission control in Hawthorne, California, before lift-off at 3:22pm from Nasa’s storied Launch Pad 39A. The SpaceX launch was the first of American astronauts from US soil since the space shuttle programme ended in 2011 and the first crewed flight ever by a private company. “It’s been 18 years working towards this goal. This is hopefully the first step on a journey towards civilisation on Mars,” SpaceX founder Musk said. Nasa administrator Jim Bridenstine said it was a “great day” for Nasa and SpaceX and an “important milestone for the nation”. “We’re not celebrating yet,” Bridenstine cautioned. “We will celebrate when they’re home safely.” In a brief interview from space, Hurley said that in keeping with the tradition of having astronauts name their spacecraft, he and Behnken had named the Crew Dragon capsule “Endeavour” after the retired space shuttle on which they both flew. Behnken said the SpaceX capsule is a “lot different than its namesake” in that “it has touch display screens”. The mission, dubbed “Demo-2”, ends a government monopoly on space flight and is the final test flight before Nasa certifies SpaceX’s capsule for regular crewed missions. Behnken, 49, and Hurley, 53, former military test pilots who joined Nasa in 2000, were expected to dock with the space station at 10:29am (10:20pm Hong Kong time) on Sunday. They will join US astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner aboard the ISS for up to four months. SpaceX said Crew Dragon was on the correct trajectory to link up with the space station orbiting 400km (250 miles) above the Earth. Boeing Starliner fails to reach ISS after going off course on debut test flight The reusable first booster stage of the Falcon 9 rocket separated cleanly about 2.5 minutes after lift-off and landed upright on a floating barge off the Atlantic coast. The second stage also separated smoothly. The launch had originally been scheduled for Wednesday but was delayed because of weather, which also remained uncertain on Saturday right up until lift-off. President Donald Trump flew to Florida to watch the launch and delivered remarks to Nasa and SpaceX employees on what he called a “special day.” Trump praised Musk and said the launch “makes clear the commercial space industry is the future”. He also repeated his vow to send American astronauts back to the Moon in 2024 and eventually to Mars. Behnken and Hurley blasted off from Launch Pad 39A, the same one used by Neil Armstrong on Apollo 11’s 1969 journey to the Moon. The pair, veterans of two space shuttle missions each, were in quarantine for more than two weeks ahead of the flight and were regularly tested for Covid-19. The right stuff: SpaceX’s first astronaut launch has cool factor They went through the same preparations Saturday that they went through on Wednesday, donning their futuristic SpaceX-designed spacesuits four hours before launch. After saying goodbye to their wives – both former astronauts – they were driven to the launch pad in an electric car built by Tesla, one of Musk’s other companies. The Crew Dragon mission is a defining moment for SpaceX, which Musk founded in 2002 with the goal of producing a lower-cost alternative to human space flight. The US space agency paid more than US$3 billion for SpaceX to design, build, test and operate its reusable Dragon capsule for six future space round trips. Can Elon Musk help Tom Cruise film the world’s first action movie in space? Nasa has had to pay Russia for its Soyuz rockets to take US astronauts to space ever since the shuttle programme ended. SpaceX conducted a successful test flight of Crew Dragon to the ISS in March 2019 with a sensor-laden mannequin on board named Ripley, after the character played by Sigourney Weaver in the Alien movies. The project has experienced delays, explosions, and parachute problems – but even so, SpaceX has beaten its giant competitor Boeing to the punch. Additional reporting by Associated Press