SpaceX launched four astronauts to the International Space Station on Sunday in a spectacular evening liftoff that came days after the company’s Dragon capsule became the first privately owned and operated spacecraft to be certified by NASA for human spaceflight.
This marks the second-ever crewed mission for Elon Musk’s private space-faring firm SpaceX, after the successful launch and return of NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley with the Demo-2 mission this summer.
“This is another historic moment — it seems like every time I come to Kennedy [Space Center] we’re making history, and this is no different,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a pre-launch news conference on Friday. “The history being made this time is we’re launching what we call an operational flight to the International Space Station.”
NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker, and Soichi Noguchi, an astronaut with Japan’s space agency, are now in orbit, riding aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule that is expected to dock with the ISS on Monday at 11 pm ET.
The crew will spend 27 hours in orbit as the spacecraft slowly maneuvers toward its destination.
With Covid-19 still surging, NASA continued the safety precautions put in place for SpaceX’s crew launch in May. The astronauts went into quarantine with their families in October.
All launch personnel wore masks, and the number of guests at Kennedy was limited. Even the two astronauts on the first SpaceX crew flight stayed behind at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Vice President Mike Pence, chairman of the National Space Council, traveled from Washington to watch the launch.
