SpaceX Crew Dragon Launched 4 Astronauts to Space Station

SpaceX has successfully launched its first operational space taxi flight called  Space X Crew-1 Dragon for NASA on November 15, 2020 from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida. It has been launched on Falcon 9.

Highlights

The rocket lifted off from NASA’s Pad 39. It carried four astronauts in a Crew Dragon capsule to orbit. Thereafter, it returned to Earth for a drone-ship landing in the Atlantic Ocean. The Space X Crew-1 Dragon is called Resilience. It is bound for the International Space Station (ISS). But, this time instead of carrying the traditional crew supplies and research experiments this spacecraft carried a different type of cargo into space comprising of three NASA astronauts namely, Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi.

SpaceX Crew-1

This is also known as USCV-1 or Crew-1. The Crew-1 is the first crewed operational flight of a Crew Dragon spacecraft. The mission is also the first crewed night launch by the United States since STS-130. This mission is the second crewed orbital flight of the Crew Dragon. It is the first operational mission to the International Space Station in the Commercial Crew Program. The mission is expected to last 180 days. It is expected to return to Earth via splashdown and it will be reused for another future mission.

First operational mission

The first operational mission in the Commercial Crew Program which was originally designated as United States Crew Vehicle, mission 1 (USCV-1). It was first announced in November 2012 and with several delays it has been launched on November 16, 2020.