Washington (AFP)

Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, NASA and SpaceX continue preparations for the historic mission of May 27, when for the first time since 2011, astronauts will fly into space from the United States and not on board 'a Russian rocket.

On May 27 at 4:42 p.m. local time (8:42 p.m. GMT), at the legendary Kennedy Space Center in Florida from where Neil Armstrong and his teammates took off for the Moon, a Falcon 9 rocket from the company created by Elon Musk will ignite its engines with attached to its top a brand new capsule called Crew Dragon. American astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will be strapped there, direction: the International Space Station.

The two men have been training for years for this demonstration mission with a strong geopolitical dimension: if the aircraft fulfills its promises, the United States will no longer have to buy seats in the Russian Soyuz, the only vehicles capable of rallying the station since the American shuttles were retired after thirty years of service nine years ago.

Added to this is the concretization of a new economic model for the illustrious space agency: NASA has invested billions in the development of the spacecraft and another by Boeing, but as a client, on the basis of a service contract, where SpaceX and Boeing will each have to make six round trips to the ISS. A model supposed to avoid the financial chasms of the previous programs, or that of the future heavy rocket SLS which targets the Moon in 2024.

Crew Dragon will succeed the only four vehicles "made in the USA" that have sent astronauts into space since the 1960s: Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and space shuttles.

"We are doing this in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. It is a high priority mission for the United States of America," said Jim Bridenstine.

But, pandemic forces, NASA does not want crowds crowding the beaches along Cape Canaveral. "We are asking people not to go to the Kennedy Space Center," said the NASA chief.

"It's obviously disappointing that the pandemic is depriving us of the luxury of having our families and friends at Kennedy to attend the launch, but obviously it's impossible in today's environment," said Doug Hurley, who attended the last theft of a "Space Shuttle" in July 2011.

- Success for SpaceX -

The astronauts will be quarantined in Houston two weeks before and will then be taken to Florida by a NASA plane. Meanwhile, NASA teams in Houston and Florida and SpaceX in Los Angeles are wearing masks and gloves, and half of SpaceX engineers are teleworking, according to Gwynne Shotwell, director of operations for SpaceX.

The day of the launch, in the control room, NASA engineers will work from positions spaced from the "six feet" (two meters) regulatory, said Steve Stich, of NASA.

Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, who have been training for years on this mission called "Demo-2", will stay on the ISS for one to four months maximum, with Crew Dragon able to stay in orbit 119 days.

For SpaceX, a company founded in 2002 by Elon Musk who also created Tesla, flying astronauts will be a consecration.

The ex-start-up knocked down the giant Boeing, which missed the unmanned demonstration mission of its Starliner capsule and will have to start it again.

SpaceX has resupplied the ISS 19 times with equipment and food with the cargo version of Dragon since 2012, and the manned version successfully completed a general rehearsal of the mission, with a mannequin on board, in March 2019.

The company has established itself as the leader in private launches thanks to its reusable rocket, Falcon 9, the first stage of which returns to land on a barge in the Atlantic, vertically.

"I will be a little relieved when they are in orbit, a little more when they get to the station, and I will be sleeping again when they are back on Earth," said Gwynne Shotwell.

On Thursday, NASA also selected SpaceX from three companies competing to build a landing gear. Boeing was not retained.

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