SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spaceship with two U.S. astronauts on board has entered orbit.
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, Elon Musk, will deliver astronauts Bob Benken and Dag Hurley to the International Space Station (ISS). It is expected that the docking of the spacecraft with the ISS will occur in 19 hours.
The Falcon 9 rocket with Crew Dragon launched from the launch site at Cape Canaveral, in the state of Florida. Initially, the launch of Crew Dragon was supposed to take place on May 27, but it was postponed due to weather conditions.
This is the first-ever manned launch by a private company. It is also the first U.S. manned flight since 2011 when the Space Shuttle program closed. Since then, NASA astronauts on the MSCs were delivered on Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
SpaceX developed Crew Dragon for NASA. It was first introduced in 2014, but another six years were spent on finalizing and testing the cargo version. Prior to this, SpaceX used the reusable Dragon Dragon Space Shuttle to deliver cargo into orbit, which made 22 flights to the ISS without a crew.
