Pre-dawn Skies Light Up With Crewed Launch
Launch view from Titusville, Florida. Image: Erin Akins, Titusville Area Chamber of Commerce
April 23, 2021 – The SpaceX Falcon 9 launched 4 astronauts on a NASA mission to the International Space Station, becoming the first crew ever propelled into orbit by a rocket booster recycled from a previous spaceflight.
The U.S. returned to launching astronauts from American soil last May, nine years after the space shuttle program ended in 2011.
The Crew-2 mission launched today is the second of six crewed missions NASA and SpaceX will fly as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.
This mission has several firsts, including:
- First commercial crew mission to fly two international partners
- First commercial crew handover between astronauts on the space station as Crew-1 and Crew-2 astronauts will spend about five days together on station before Crew-1 returns to Earth
- First reuse of the Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket on a crew mission –Crew Dragon Endeavour flew the historic Demo-2 mission and the Falcon 9 flew astronauts on the Crew-1 mission
- First time two commercial crew spacecraft will be docked to station at the same time.
Minutes after launch, the Falcon 9’s second stage had boosted the crew capsule to Earth orbit, reaching speeds of nearly 17,000 miles per hour. The reusable first stage made it’s way back to earth and touched down without mishap on SpaceX landing platform, named Of Course I Still Love You.
After a 23-hour journey the crew is scheduled to arrive at the space station early Saturday morning, allowing the crew to settle in for a six-month stay in their new home 250 miles above the Earth.