SpaceX launched two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station today, becoming the first company to send humans to orbit on a commercial spaceship.<\/p>\n
The Falcon 9 rocket\u2019s liftoff from NASA\u2019s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 3:22 p.m. ET (12:22 p.m. PT) marked a feat that Americans hadn\u2019t been able to do since NASA retired the space shuttles in 2011: sending astronauts into orbit from a U.S. launch pad rather than relying on the Russians.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is absolutely our honor to be part of this huge effort to get the United States back in the launch business,\u201d NASA astronaut Doug Hurley told SpaceX Mission Control just before liftoff.<\/p>\n
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine got emotional as he reflected on the achievement. \u201cIt\u2019s been nine years since we\u2019ve launched American astronauts on American rockets from American soil, and now it\u2019s done,\u201d he said on NASA TV. \u201cWe have done it. It\u2019s been way too long.\u201d<\/p>\n
No technical issues arose during today\u2019s countdown, but the weather made it a nail-biter, just as it did during Wednesday\u2019s initial launch attempt.<\/p>\n
On that day, dark clouds and the accompanying risk of lightning forced a postponement. This morning, the weather forecast was 50-50, but the skies cleared enough for Hurley and his crewmate, Bob Behnken, to ride SpaceX\u2019s Crew Dragon capsule eastward into orbit.<\/p>\n
Ships were strategically placed in the Atlantic Ocean just in case an emergency abort and splashdown was required. (It wasn\u2019t required.) Minutes after launch, the Falcon 9\u2019s reusable first-stage booster successfully touched down on SpaceX\u2019s drone ship, christened Of Course I Still Love You.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SpaceX launched two NASA astronauts to...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-tech","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25517"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25518,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25517\/revisions\/25518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}