First manned rocket launch… Civil space flight era begins

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 on May 30 at 19:22 (East Time) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA, heading to the International Space Station ISS. It has been nine years since astronauts headed directly to space from the mainland of the United States.

This challenge was originally scheduled to take place three days ago, but it was postponed due to bad weather. However, the launch itself went smoothly on the 30th, and it also succeeded in recovering the booster, a characteristic of the SpaceX rocket. The Falcon 9 booster was good on an unmanned ship (Of Course I Still Love You) a few minutes after launch.

The spacecraft Crew Dragon, aboard astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley, was separated from Falcon 9 and flew for one day to the International Space Station, docked with the ISS around 10:30 am on the 31st.

Until now, manned space flight has been realized only in some countries such as the United States, Russia, and China. There has been a move to entrust the development and launch of spacecraft to private companies since the 1980s, but the realization was in 2010 when NASA launched the Commercial Crew Development project.

This launch is part of the Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission made as part of this project. This mission is aimed at verifying manned flight through SpaceX. If this test is successful, the manned space flight through SpaceX will be operated in earnest from August as scheduled, and the first flight will take 4 astronauts and head to the ISS. After the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011, the US relied on Russian Soyuz for manned space flights, but it is now operating independently.

This success is also significant for SpaceX. Of course, on May 29, the prototype of a rocket spacecraft under development by SpaceX failed with an explosion during testing (video below), but the spacecraft will be used for lunar travel in 2023, and this launch will add new knowledge to SpaceX. Seems to be. There is also a plan for Artemis, a manned lunar flight by NASA in 2024, and SpaceX is also participating in this.

In this test, the two astronauts aboard the Crew Dragon are also veterans with space shuttle experience. In the case of Hurley, he also boarded the retired STS-135. This launch gives the impression that humanity’s targets for the Moon or Mars are a step closer to reality, and at the same time signals that the era of civilian space flight that will unfold in the future is in full swing. Related information can be found here .