Achievement of SpaceX
The United States entered a new epoch in human space exploration with a private corporation launching astronauts into the international space station in orbit for the first time, last Saturday.SpaceX, the rocket company own by Elon Musk, the billionaire, created to fulfill his dream of sending colonists to Mars, launched a Falcon 9 rocket, featuring a Crew Dragon capsule with two NASA astronauts on board. SpaceX is also the first private company to achieve a goal, putting men into space, that only nations have achieved until now. The space station voyage was the first from America since the retirement of the space shuttles in 2011. [embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AMzirRpaEo[/embedyt] Two American astronauts departed at 3:22 p.m. from the same Florida launchpad that used to serve Apollo missions and space shuttles. The rocket and spacecraft designed and run not by NASA but by SpaceX.We did it 🚀
In partnership with @SpaceX, we successfully launched @NASA_Astronauts to space from U.S. soil. Here’s a recap of today’s historic #LaunchAmerica mission with @AstroBehnken and @Astro_Doug who are on their journey to the @Space_Station : https://t.co/Y0vkPwKJSp pic.twitter.com/oJlMl20Cci — NASA (@NASA) May 31, 2020
The audience including President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence watched and cheered as the countdown ticked to zero, and the Falcon 9 rocket rumbled to air. Millions of people worldwide were watching the launch online and on TV, many of them in their homes from quarantine.
The Crew Dragon
The Falcon 9 was bearing a capsule with the Crew Dragon, directed by SpaceX staff in control centers in Florida and Hawthorne, Calif. The assignation with the International Space Station was arranged to have on Sunday morning. The two astronauts, Robert L. Behnken and Douglas G. Hurley selected by NASA along with a group of their colleagues as first customers of space capsules manufactured by private companies.The Significant Rendezvous
The spacecraft docked at the International Space Station and completed the first phase of its 19 hours journey. At 1:22 p.m. the two astronauts, the Crew Dragon, exchanging greetings and hugs with the three astronauts already on the space station. This Crew Dragon test flight maybe a squeeze journey to certify that the shuttle meets NASA’s needs and security guidelines in arrange to begin schedule trips taking astronauts to and from the space station. Mr. Behnken and Mr. Hurley had to wait nearly three hours longer because the air pressure was evened up within their capsule and the station, no air leakage was confirmed, and the capsule was hooked into the station power grids.Before Mr. Behnken and Mr. Hurley return to Earth in the Crew Dragon, the current mission will not be a complete success. That they named Endeavour, the same name as the former spacecraft on which both men flew and the British sailing ship under James Cook 's command as he researched the Pacific.Huge thank you to @NASA, @SpaceX, and America for making this possible! pic.twitter.com/xp8XCpU2HD
— Bob Behnken (@AstroBehnken) June 1, 2020
A drop of Elon Musk
Elon Musk is an engineer, industrial designer, and innovative entrepreneur. He is a South African, Canadian, and US citizen. And also early investor CEO and product architect of Tesla, the founder, CEO, and chief engineer/designer of SpaceX, founder of The Boring Company, co-founder of Neuralink, and co-founder and initial co-chairman of OpenAI- the Artificial Intelligence Company. In 2018, He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). He was ranked 21st on The World's Most Powerful People's Forbes list in December 2016 and was ranked joint-first on the Forbes list of the 2019 Most Innovative Leaders. As of May 2020, he has a net worth of $36.5 billion and is listed by Forbes as the 31st-richest person in the world. He is the longest-tenured Chief executive of almost any manufacturer of automobiles worldwide. Mr. Musk, a 48-year-old South African who started SpaceX with mere knowledge of rockets. Mr. Musk when he was in his 20s, was chief executive of PayPal, creating his 1st fortune once eBay purchased that company. He chose an idealistic challenge as the subject of his new wealth: delivering a little greenhouse to Mars.How SpaceX has started
Since rockets were too costly in the United States, he headed to Russia to purchase the launch of a transformed Russian ballistic missile. Unable to reach an agreement with the Russians, Mr. Musk turned to Jim Cantrell, an aviation advisor accompanying him on the tour, and to Michael D. Griffin, who would eventually become NASA's administrator, and said he felt they could create the rockets themselves. He established SpaceX in 2002. First-ever three attempts of his Falcon 1 rocket were unsuccessful. With one more failure, SpaceX could have buried with other failure rocket launches.
The fourth Falcon 1 successfully made it into orbit. SpaceX was among the two companies chosen by NASA, and contributions from the Space Agency supported Mr. Musk build the Falcon 9 rocket and the Dragon capsule, which developed into a Crew Dragon spacecraft now headed straight to the Space Station.
Tasks of Crew Dragon
As for now, Mr. Behnken and Mr. Hurley have an open-ended stay in orbit. The Crew Dragon test flight was initially planned to last just a few weeks, allowing the astronauts to test out versatility of the spacecraft including act as a shelter in case of an emergency. However, there have been setbacks in accomplishing tasks on the spacecraft, along with another which NASA is relying on for astronaut transport, the Boeing Starliner capsule. As a consequence, the space station actually has only three astronauts on board, Mr. Cassidy and two Russians, Ivan Vagner and Anatoly Ivanishin, restricting how much scientific work can indeed be performed. Mr. Behnken and Mr. Hurley will indeed help with renovation tasks such as spacewalks in the installation of new lithium-ion batteries that have just arrived in a Japanese cargo ship. Currently, the Crew Dragon is space approved for up to four months. The solar panels of the spacecraft slowly degrade over time, and the concern is that if it is docked quite long, the panels will not be able to produce sufficient power to re-enter Earth's atmosphere in a safe way. However, during the next few weeks, astronauts will regularly turn on the Crew Dragon and test it out. If the solar arrays turn out to be more robust than anticipated, the task could be prolonged over four months.Future Missions for Crew Dragon
Since no significant issues occur over this space mission, NASA will use this flight data to verify that the Crew Dragon is qualified for regular missions to the space station. The next Crew Dragon mission is to send out four astronauts: three from NASA and the other from the Japanese Space Agency. It's the first operational mission to be carried out. But Mr. Behnken and Mr. Hurley were the first to get there. Mr. Hurley said that they were just the lucky guys who got to fly the rocket that historic day.Falcon 9 has returned to terra firms after the historic launch
After launching two astronauts to orbit on Crew Dragon, About 9 minutes after liftoff Falcon 9 landed on the "Of Course I Still Love You" SpaceX drone ship which was stationed a few hundred miles off the Florida coast. And returned to Port Canaveral with the rocket secured to its deck on Tuesday, June 2nd.
Even though we can not conclude that the exact booster will be flying once more, however, SpaceX had not revealed its destruction yet. And the company may likely choose to retain it as a legendary artifact. The first Falcon 9 first phase that ever landed successfully now stands outside SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne, California uses as an example.After launching @AstroBehnken and @Astro_Doug to orbit on Crew Dragon, Falcon 9 landed on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship and returned to Port Canaveral pic.twitter.com/ACov1BhgXY
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 2, 2020
