On April 23, NASA and commercial rocket company SpaceX launched a missile carrying a group of four new astronauts to the International Space Station. This is the first crew to be put into orbit with a recycled rocket from an earlier flight.
Photojournalists installed remote cameras to be ready to record the missile launch image on April 22. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon space shuttle, set to take off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. It will take almost 24 hours to reach the space station, whose orbit is about 250 miles (400 km) from Earth. It was originally scheduled to launch on April 22 but had to be delayed for a day due to unfavorable weather forecast. This rocket launch marks NASA’s second return to service after nine years of stopping the shuttle from space in the United States. It is also the third crew flight to be launched into orbit under a public-private partnership between NASA and SpaceX, the rocket company founded and owned by billionaire high-tech entrepreneur Elon Musk. The crew this time has 4 members including two NASA astronauts, commander Shane Kimbrough (53 years old) and pilot Megan McArthur (49 years old), along with Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide (52 years old) and specialist Thomas Pesquet (43 years old), a French engineer with the European Space Agency. 6 months of space experiment Crew 2 is expected to spend about six months conducting scientific experiments and maintenance before returning to Earth in the fall. The four members of Crew 1, sent to the space station in November, are scheduled to return to Earth on April 28. Crew 2’s mission is also special in that the Falcon 9 launch vehicle using the same early stage booster has put Crew 1 in orbit. This is the first time that a proven booster device has been used again during a crew launch. Reusable booster vehicles, designed to fly back to Earth on their own and land safely after they separate from the missile’s remains a few minutes after launch. SpaceX’s reusable rocket strategy has pioneered more economical space travel. SpaceX has so far recorded more than 45 successful Falcon 9 landings, and the company has refurbished and reused the majority of them for multiple flights. However, all previous flights only carried cargo, not people, into space. The pilot of Crew 2, McArthur, will make history as the first female Pilot of the Crew and the second in her family to ride a shuttle. She is married to NASA astronaut Bob Behnken, who took a SpaceX demonstration flight last year. If all goes according to plan, they will arrive at the space station on Saturday. McArthur and her three friends and crew will be greeted by four astronauts of Crew 1 (three from NASA and one from Japan JAXA Aerospace Exploration Agency) and two crew members. Russian family and an American astronaut were on a Soyuz flight to the space station.
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