The Crew Dragon reached Earth’s orbit around 12 minutes after takeoff. In the second stage, the Crew Dragon proceeded towards the International Space Station.

The first stage rocket performed a flip manoeuvre, burnt during atmospheric re-entry, and was retrieved by the drone ship, /Of Course I Still Love You/, in the Atlantic Ocean.Ī few seconds after the separation, the ignition of the second stage engine began. Two minutes and 33 seconds after liftoff, the first stage main engine was cut off and three seconds later, the first and the second stages separated.

This ensures better performance.Ī SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft is launched from Launch Complex 39A on NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 mission to the International Space Station with NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley onboard, Saturday, May 30, 2020, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Once Behnken and Hurley entered the capsule, the hatch was shut, and the rocket was fuelled with cold propellants for half an hour before the launch. This is the same launchpad from which Saturn V rocket for the Apollo 11 Mission had taken off, carrying the first humans to the Moon. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Crew Dragon spacecraft lifted off from launch complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Centre. “Let’s light this candle!” Hurley said, right before liftoff, echoing the words used by Alan Shepard on America’s first human spaceflight in 1961. But due to the weather conditions, the space agency scrubbed the launch and has rescheduled it on May 31 (Image: NASA, SpaceX) What happened at the launch? SpaceX was supposed to launch two NASA astronauts aboard its Crew Dragon capsule on top of its Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station (ISS) on May 27.

Further, this is the first time that astronauts have been launched from US soil since the STS-135 mission on July 8, 2011, following which all astronauts were flown to the International Space Station in Russia’s Soyuz Capsule.

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