On May 27, the first human flight from the United States after the withdrawal of the Shuttle.
Thanks to Elon Musk
SpaceX, landed in the Gulf of Mexico
S pazio, the Nasa-SpaceX mission postponed to Saturday due to bad weather
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November 16, 2020 Shortly before half past one in the Italian night, Elon Musk's Spacex Crew Dragon capsule, carrying four astronauts, was launched from Cape Canaveral towards the international space station.
The launch, scheduled for last Saturday, had been postponed due to bad weather.
For the Space X program this is the first operational mission, after the May test, which brought two other cosmonauts to the ISS and which marked the resumption of launches of space vectors by the United States, interrupted in 2011, after the experience of the Space Shuttles.
On board the capsule, dubbed 'resilience', three NASA Americans, Commander Michael Hopkins, pilot Victor Glover and mission specialist Shannon Walker, and a Japanese space agency (jaxa) astronaut, Soichi Noguchi.
Waiting for them on the orbiting station, the American Kate Rubins, flight engineer, and the two Russian cosmonauts, the commander Sergey Ryzhikov and the flight engineer Sergey Kud-Sverchkov.
The 4 astronauts will remain on the ISS for six months, during which they will carry out various scientific experiments.
Crew Dragon, the first rocket built by private individuals for NASA, thus seems destined to alternate with the Russian Soyuz for the missions of the international crews aboard the ISS.
The arrival at the orbiting laboratory is expected around 5 am tomorrow, after 27 hours of flight.
This time Elon Musk, founder and chief executive of Spacex, was forced to monitor the launch of his spacecraft from afar, due to the "probable" coronavirus infection, as he himself tweeted.
To ensure the success of the mission, NASA has introduced severe anti-covid measures, starting with the astronauts, who were subjected to a highly controlled quarantine.