SpaceX and NASA Are Set for a Historic Crewed Launch Saturday. Here ’s How to Watch

It’s been a long time since the country that once flew nine crewed missions to the moon has been able to launch even a single human being to space aboard its own rockets from its own soil. Ever since the final flight of the space shuttle in July 2011, the U.S. has been dependent on buying rides aboard Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft—at a current $80 million a seat—if it wants to get as far as low-Earth orbit. [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHlQRKGt9zY] All of that is set to change at 3:22 PM EDT on Saturday, May 30, when astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley are scheduled to make their second attempt at taking off aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft atop a Falcon 9 rocket, bound for the International Space Station (ISS). Both astronauts are veterans of two previous shuttle flights, and Hurley, fittingly, was one of the crew members aboard the final shuttle mission. If all goes to plan, the crew will reach orbit just 12 minutes after launch, and will dock with the station before noon the following morning. You can watch the launch above. Saturday’s flight has been a long time in coming. It was in 2010 that NASA began its commercial crew program and in 2016 that it awarded contracts worth $2.6 billion to SpaceX and $4.2 billion to Boeing, charging both companies with the task of developing crew vehicles capable of shuttling astronauts to and from the ISS, freeing NASA up to focus on crewed missions to the moon and Mars. Early estimates cal...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Space Space Explorers Source Type: news