The US space travelers Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley took off in a “Crew Dragon” space capsule with a “Falcon 9” rocket from the Cape Canaveral spaceport in Florida. The US space agency NASA broadcast the successful launch live. “We have taken off,” said NASA on Twitter. “History has been written.”
On Sunday, after a 19-hour flight, the two astronauts are docked at the ISS. They should stay around a month. It is the first time that a private space company, SpaceX, has transported astronauts to the ISS.
A first test start was canceled on Wednesday due to bad weather conditions around a quarter of an hour before the start. Even before the second attempt, the weather conditions had initially only looked moderate, but then the clouds had cleared in time. The launch entitled “LaunchAmerica” was eagerly awaited worldwide.
The two astronauts in the space capsule before take-off
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SpaceX was founded by entrepreneur Elon Musk and has so far only transported cargo to the ISS. Because of the corona pandemic, access to the spaceport site in the US state of Florida, where visitors are normally allowed to watch take-offs, was severely restricted.
US President Donald Trump had arrived. “We saw a heroic act,” he said after the start. The last time astronauts flew to the ISS was in summer 2011 on the space shuttle “Atlantis”. The US space agency NASA then mothballed its space shuttle fleet for cost reasons and has since been dependent on Russia for flights to the ISS. At around 80 million euros per flight in a Russian Soyuz capsule, that was not only expensive, but also scratched the Americans’ egos.
Also present: US Vice Mike Pence (left) and President Donald Trump
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Actually, NASA had already announced its own flights from the USA to the ISS for 2017 – but in the course of technical problems, financing difficulties and restructuring after the election of President Trump, the project was postponed more and more.
qu / fab (dpa, ap, afp)
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