"Four, three, two, one ..." Seconds that go down in history: Saturday, 3:22 p.m. (7:22 p.m. GMT), SpaceX's Falcon9 rocket with two astronauts on board, takes off and spins at a speed of 25,000 km / h, watched by millions of people glued to their screens. In the control center, teams are jubilant, the launch of the SpaceX mission resuscitates the dream of American space conquest. A small hot point vanishing in the sky, the rocket propelled astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley in ten minutes 200 km above the oceans, spinning at 20 times the speed of sound towards the International Space Station (ISS) at which they will automatically dock on Sunday at 2:29 p.m. GMT if everything continues as normal.
Ascension broadcast live
The two astronauts' hypersonic ascent was broadcast live by cameras inside their Crew Dragon capsule, and once in orbit, the two best friends offered a guided tour, making somersaults in weightlessness, at above Newfoundland. They named their ship Endeavor, a nod to the shuttle in which everyone traveled in the late 2000s.
The changing weather did not ultimately cause a second postponement, while the risk of lightning had postponed from Wednesday to Saturday this takeoff. The rocket built by SpaceX near Los Angeles took off safely, in a finally largely blue sky, from the Kennedy space center, under the eyes of tens of thousands of people installed along the beaches of the area.
A great moment that Donald Trump also wanted to attend in person despite the riots that have shaken the country for several days: "We are here today to celebrate the launch of a new shuttle but also the triumphant return of our nation under the stars, "he said.
Also a political victory, NASA thus resumed manned space flights launched from American soil when it had been obliged for nine years to pass through Russia. "We have not seen American astronauts take off from American territory on American rockets for nine years," said NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine. "Today we did it again". "Former leaders have put the United States at the mercy of foreign countries to send our astronauts into orbit. It's over," added President Trump.
For the latter, the United States is resuming its leadership position, and he promises that the best is yet to come with a return to the Moon and missions for Mars.
Elon Musk "overwhelmed with emotion"
"Today's launch shows that the future belongs to the private space industry," also launched the President, after having applauded Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX in 2002. Because the success of the mission is also a victory for the visibly moved American billionaire: "I am overwhelmed with emotion," the boss said at a press conference later. "I find it hard to speak, it's been 18 years that we have been working with this goal. I can hardly believe that it happened." The boss of SpaceX, the first private company to achieve this feat, hopes that this will trigger a real exploration of space, with flights open to the public in the long term.
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The mission may seem like a modest step in space exploration: "Bob" and "Doug" will neither go to the Moon nor to Mars, only in the old space station, 400 km from Earth, where Russians and Americans and others have come and gone since 1998. NASA, however, sees it as a "revolution" because SpaceX will give the United States access to space, cheaper than its previous programs. For three billion granted since 2011 as part of a fixed price contract, SpaceX has fully developed a new space taxi and promised six round trips to the ISS. Previously, the space agency ordered a specific vehicle from the giants of the industry, and assumed all budget overruns.
In doing so, the ex-start-up defeated Boeing, whose Starliner capsule missed an empty test flight last year. Adding to the emerging mythology of society, the launch took place from step 39A from which the Apollo missions to explore the Moon took off in the 1960s and 1970s. For Elon Musk, a brilliant and impetuous entrepreneur obsessed with red planet, the chip jumps 400 km from Earth are only one step, "a first step in our journey to establish a civilization on Mars", and to make humanity a "multiplanetary species".