CNN botched their coverage of the historic SpaceX-NASA launch on Saturday afternoon.
The cable news network failed to show the actual launch when NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley took off from the Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 3:22 p.m. EST and will dock with the International Space Station orbiting 250 miles above the Earth’s surface.
Instead, a split screen of the ship before takeoff and the astronauts inside shifted to an image of the spaceship already several seconds into liftoff as CNN’s audio from NASA was roughly 30 seconds behind and still in the count-down phase.
The ship had already been moving toward the atmosphere for about 20 seconds by the time the person doing the voice-over said, “Liftoff.”
The test mission, the first crewed launch from U.S. soil since the space shuttle program was shut down in 2011, was carried out on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft powered by Falcon 9 rockets.
The network tweeted a clip of the space launch without audio.
The successful launch, which happened on the second attempt after the first was canceled last week due to poor weather, was the fruition of a partnership between NASA and the private space-faring company, SpaceX.
A SpaceX rocket and spacecraft carrying two NASA astronauts soared into outer space Saturday — marking the first time humans have traveled into Earth’s orbit from US soil in nearly a decade. https://t.co/qZ1msdMKi3 pic.twitter.com/mNEmy4LS0h
— CNN Business (@CNNBusiness) May 30, 2020
