On Sunday the fifteenth of November, four astronauts, Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker, and Soichi Noguchi took off on a SpaceX spacecraft, beginning what NASA hopes to be a successful partnership between the two companies. This partnership could help to ensure that the International Space Station is fully staffed and running efficiently. The four astronauts, riding on the SpaceX Crew Dragon Capsule Resilience, spent about 27 hours in orbit before arriving safely at the ISS on Tuesday, the seventeenth. Just an hour after launching, commander Hopkins commented, “That was one hell of a ride,” and “Resilience is in orbit.”
This marks the first fully crewed mission for SpaceX, although the plans have been in motion since 2014, when Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX initially pitched the idea.
The design reflects an Apollo-like capsule, with multiple safety measures to ensure the astronauts safety. If something goes wrong during the launch, the capsule has a LES, or a Launch Escape System, that separates the Crew Dragon from the rocket itself. The capsule is also designed to be “two-fault tolerant” so that even if two systems were to fail, such as the thruster or computers, the capsule would still be able to bring the astronauts home safely.
Currently, the astronauts plan to stay for six months at the ISS. Hopkins, age fifty-one, is the commander for the flight. He is the first member of the US Space Force to go to space, and served as colonel there. He previously stayed at the ISS for one hundred and sixty-six days back in 2013-2014. Walker, age fifty-five, previously stayed at the ISS ten years ago, in 2010. She is renowned for her doctoral degree in space physics. Noguchi, also fifty-five, is the only astronaut in the crew not from NASA, but instead JAXA, Japan’s space agency. This is his third trip to space, in previous years he made three space walks. Lastly, and perhaps most historically, Glover, age 44, is the first black NASA astronaut to be a member of the space station crew. This will be his first spaceflight.
While at the ISS, the astronauts will join three other astronauts who are already there. They will uphold the responsibilities of overseeing scientific experiments, performing maintenance tasks and even communicating with students on Earth.
This historic launch can potentially demonstrate a new start to space travel and exploration as a whole. Now available commercially, it becomes possible for those who have enough money to travel to space if they wish to do so. By partnering with commercial companies, NASA will be able to invest that money into new projects that could change the world we live in. Within the next few years, as space travel continues to develop more rapidly than ever, we may be one step closer to understanding our universe.