[imagesource: NASA]

Elon Musk’s space program, SpaceX, has spent the better part of six years getting to a place where it can successfully launch astronauts into orbit.

Last year, the company conducted a full dress rehearsal, successfully launching the Crew Dragon without a crew on board.

Now the project is complete, as for the first time since 2011, US astronauts made their way to the International Space Station (ISS) from US soil.

It’s also the first time in history that a commercial aerospace company has carried humans into Earth’s orbit.

Here’s The Guardian:

A mere 19 hours after blasting off from Florida, and with a short break for a burst of Black Sabbath in between, two Nasa astronauts docked the SpaceX Dragon crew capsule to the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday in another milestone moment for their historic mission.

Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley chose Black Sabbath’s ‘Planet Caravan’ as their “wake up song” after an eight-hour sleep period during the flight.

SpaceX confirmed docking was made at 10.16am ET above the China-Mongolia border, the crew of the ISS ringing the station’s bell three times in maritime tradition to signal the new arrival.

It was a particularly poignant moment for astronaut Doug Hurley, who piloted the 2011 mission that closed the 30-year shuttle programme and now the first crewed test flight under Nasa’s $6.2bn private-public partnership known as the commercial crew programme.

We’ve selected the highlights of the 19-hour space flight, starting with the launch:

Keeping to tradition, the astronauts got to choose the name for their spacecraft. Several hours after the launch, they announced their choice:

“Without further ado, we would like to welcome you aboard capsule Endeavour,” Hurley said.

“We chose Endeavour for a few reasons, because of this incredible endeavour Nasa, SpaceX and the United States have been on since the end of the shuttle program back in 2011.

“The other reason is a little more personal to Bob and I. We both had our first flights on shuttle Endeavour, and it just meant so much for us to carry on that name.”

Running slightly ahead of schedule, the Crew Dragon (now Endeavour) arrived at the space station where it docked perfectly:

Satellite communication gave us a clear look at Hurley and Behnken working the controls from inside Endeavour/Dragon:

Finally, Hurley and Behnken complete the first stage of their mission, open the hatch, and enter the ISS:

If you’d like to take in the ceremony that followed, here it is:

Hurley and Behnken will spend up to four months orbiting Earth while SpaceX engineers analyse every aspect of the mission and the performance of the spaceship. A successful return to Earth will pave the way for regular operational missions.

There are worse ways to socially distance than in space.

If you’d like to try your hand at docking a spacecraft, try the SpaceX docking simulator – it’s harder than it looks.

Godspeed, Bob and Doug.

[source:guardian]