Cape Canaveral, Fla. – SpaceX’s sleek, new crew capsule arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday, acing its second milestone in just over a…
Cape Canaveral, Fla. – SpaceX’s sleek, new crew capsule arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday, acing its second milestone in just over a day.
No one was aboard the Dragon capsule launched Saturday on its first test flight, only an instrumented dummy. But that quickly changed once the hatch swung open and the space station astronauts floated inside.
This beefed-up, redesigned Dragon is the first American-made, designed-for-crew spacecraft to pull up to the station in eight years. The next one coming up will have its own two-man crew.
“A new generation of space flight starts now with the arrival of @SpaceX’s Crew Dragon to the @Space–Station,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine tweeted.
The space station’s three astronauts had front-row seats as the white 27-foot-long capsule neatly docked. Two hours later, the station crew entered to take air samples, wear oxygen masks and hoods until getting the all-clear.
If the six-day demo goes well, SpaceX could launch two astronauts this summer under NASA’s commercial crew program. Both astronauts — Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken — were at SpaceX Mission Control in Southern California, watching all the action.
