The launch comes after the company and NASA successfully completed the first civilian trip to the space station.
billionaire businessman Elon MuskThe rocket company SpaceX has launched four astronauts into orbit as part of a NASA mission to the International Space Station (ISS).
The astronauts were due to arrive at the space station on Wednesday night, 16 hours after their predawn liftoff from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, southeastern United States.
Kathy Lueders, NASA’s space operations mission chief, said the crew was probably “one of the most diverse” in the US space agency’s history to travel to space together.
Made up equally of men and women, the crew also included the first black woman to perform a long-duration spaceflight: Jessica Watkins, a 33-year-old geologist who earned her doctorate studying the processes behind large landslides on Mars and Earth and went on to join the Curiosity Mars rover science team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Also on the crew were Dr. Kjell Lindgren, 49, an emergency room doctor on his second trip to the ISS; Bob Hines, a 47-year-old US Air Force fighter pilot; and Samantha Cristoforetti, a 45-year-old European Space Agency astronaut and Italian Air Force jet pilot making her second flight to the space station.
“Our sincerest thanks to each of you who made this possible. Now let Falcon roar and Freedom roar,” Lindgren, the commander, said as his capsule safely entered orbit. “It was a great ride.”
The early morning launch came just two days after SpaceX and NASA completed the first charter flight to the ISS, after years of opposition.
SpaceX capsules are fully automated, opening up their use to a broader clientele. They are taken to space with the reusable Falcon 9 rocket. The capsules are also designed to fit a wider range of body sizes.
In September 2021, SpaceX completed the first fully civil flight in orbitwhich followed the edge-of-space launches by billionaires Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson.
The US space agency said the three civilian visitors to the ISS, who each paid $55 million to visit the space station, mingled while conducting experiments and educational activities. They were accompanied by a former NASA astronaut employed by Houston-based Axiom Space, which arranged the flight.
The ISS, the largest man-made object in space, spanning the size of an American football field from end to end, has been continuously occupied since November 2000, operated by a US-Russian led international consortium of five agencies. space of 15 countries.
An international crew of at least seven people typically lives and works aboard the rig as it travels at 8 km (5 miles) per second, circling the Earth once every 90 minutes.
The station’s microgravity environment provides scientists with a unique laboratory to conduct specially designed experiments on everything from fluid mechanics and combustion to cell growth and aging.