SpaceX-NASA’s upcoming Crew-1 mission

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida carrying a crew of four people to the International Space Station (ISS) on a six-month-long mission.

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Key-Points

 The mission is part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, whose objective is to make access to space easier in terms of its cost, so that cargo and crew can be easily transported to and from the ISS, enabling greater scientific research.

At the ISS, the Crew-1 team will join members of Expedition 64 and conduct microgravity studies and deliver new science hardware and experiments that they will carry with them to space aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft.

Significantly, Crew-1 will be the first operational flight of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft on a Falcon 9 rocket to the ISS and is the first of the three scheduled flights scheduled over the course of 2020-2021.

Just ahead of the mission, NASA certified SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule and the Falcon 9 rocket, making it the first spacecraft certification provided by the space agency. This means SpaceX can now operate regular flights to the space station.

Earlier in May, NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 test flight lifted off for the ISS, becoming the first crewed flight to launch from American soil since the conclusion of the space shuttle era in 2011.