SpaceX sends four astronauts to ISS

American space research organisation SpaceX has sent four astronauts to the International Space Station on Sunday through the SpaceX Crew Dragon ‘Resilience’. This time the first of what the US hopes will be many routine missions following a successful test flight in late spring.

Three Americans — Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker — and Japan’s Soichi Noguchi blasted off at 7:27 pm (0027 GMT Monday) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, thus ending almost a decade of international reliance on Russia for rides on its Soyuz rockets.

US President-elect Joe Biden hailed the launch on Twitter as a ‘testament to the power of science and what we can accomplish by harnessing our innovation, ingenuity, and determination,’ while President Donald Trump called it ‘great.’

Vice President Mike Pence, who attended the launch with his wife Karen, called it a ‘new era in human space exploration in America.’

The Pences joined NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine and his wife Michelle to watch the launch, clapping as the rocket lifted off.

The capsule successfully separated from the second stage of the rocket and, according to a SpaceX team member speaking over radio, had achieved ‘nominal orbit insertion.’

That means the capsule is currently on the right trajectory to reach the ISS.

The crew will dock at their destination at around 11:00 pm Monday night (0400 GMT Tuesday), joining two Russians and one American onboard the station, and stay for six months.

In May, SpaceX completed a demonstration mission showing it could take astronauts to the ISS and bring them back safely, a landmark development allowing the US to begin travelling to the space station under its own power once more.

The Crew Dragon earlier this week became the first spacecraft to be certified by NASA since the Space Shuttle nearly 40 years ago. It is a capsule, similar in shape to the spacecraft that preceded Space Shuttle, and its launch vehicle is a reusable SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

At the end of its missions, the Crew Dragon deploys parachutes and then splashes down in water, just as in the Apollo era. NASA turned to SpaceX and Boeing after shuttering the checkered Space Shuttle program in 2011, which failed in its main objectives of making space travel affordable and safe.