SpaceX launched a crew of four astronauts to the International Space Station on its first operational flight for NASA on Sunday night.
Sunday’s launch sent three NASA astronauts and one Japanese astronaut to the ISS. The flight is commanded by Air Force Col. Mike Hopkins and piloted by former Navy test pilot Victor Glover. The crew is rounded out by Johnson Space Center veteran Shannon Walker and Soichi Noguchi from the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency. This is Glover’s first spaceflight.
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All four astronauts were strapped into the spacecraft about two hours ahead of the flight, according to CNN. Ahead of the launch, they ran through a series of communications checks while technicians ensured the space travelers were properly secured.
The space flight is expected to take roughly 27 hours. All four crew members have an iPad at their seats that include a detailed schedule of their flight and additional data about the flight.
Sunday’s launch was originally scheduled for Saturday, but the takeoff was delayed because weather from Tropical Storm Eta prevented SpaceX from positioning the drone ship that will recover Falcon 9’s reusable booster.
Had the flight been able to take off on Saturday, the flight would have taken less than nine hours. The time disparity between Sunday’s trip and the potential Saturday trip is the result of the ISS’s movement around the Earth and the fact that NASA added additional time so that the astronauts could sleep before connecting to the space station.
The astronauts decided to name their capsule Resilience, according to the Orlando Sentinel, a tribute to the difficulties brought by 2020, most notably the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 243,000 people in the United States.
“By working together on these difficult times, you’ve inspired the nation and the world,” Hopkins said minutes before takeoff. “Now it’s time for us to do our part. Crew-1 for all.”
The Crew Dragon is the same spacecraft that took astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the ISS in May. That test launch was the first manned launch from U.S. soil in nearly a decade. Until SpaceX’s successful test flight, NASA relied on Russian rockets to send astronauts to the ISS after the agency’s shuttle program was shut down in 2011.
