Next stop for SpaceX’s Dragon capsule: the International Space Station
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The United States opened a new chapter in its grand adventure in space Saturday, when a SpaceX rocket blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center, carrying two astronauts to orbit from United States soil for the first time in nearly a decade.
For SpaceX, it was the climax of an improbable odyssey that began in 2002 when Elon Musk founded a space company with the goal of traveling to Mars. On board the spacecraft are two of NASA’s most experienced space travelers, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, both former military pilots who previously had each flown two missions on the Space Shuttle. But their ride to space this time was on a vastly different spacecraft, a fully autonomous, next-generation capsule outfitted with Tesla-like touchscreens and temperature controls that allow astronauts to keep the cabin at between 65 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
In 2014, NASA awarded contracts to Boeing and SpaceX, worth $6.8 billion combined, to design and build spacecraft capable of flying astronauts to the station. Previously, it had hired the private sector to fly cargo and supplies there. But outsourcing human space flight to companies was considered a risky and even reckless move in some quarters, even among NASA’s leadership. Along the way there had been a number of stumbles that delayed the first flights from 2017.
But it has since investigated and remedied those failures to NASA’s satisfaction, and in the days leading up to the launch, the space agency praised the company many in the agency once looked upon skeptically.Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley are on their way to the International Space Station aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, but still have quite a way to journey.
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