WIKIARCHIVES.SPACE

Ken Bowersox, acting Associate Administrator for NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, monitors the docking of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft with NASA astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken onboard to the International Space Station, Sunday, May 31, 2020, in firing room four of the Launch Control Center at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 mission is the first launch with astronauts of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. The test flight serves as an end-to-end demonstration of SpaceX’s crew transportation system. Behnken and Hurley launched at 3:22 p.m. EDT on Saturday, May 30, from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center and docked with the International Space Station at 10:16am EDT on Sunday, May 31.. A new era of human spaceflight is set to begin as American astronauts once again launch on an American rocket from American soil to low-Earth orbit for the first time since the conclusion of the Space Shuttle Program in 2011.