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Nasa astronauts, Robert Behnken & Douglas Hurley have taken another step forward towards creating a whole new universe for commercial crew flight, by successful docking of SpaceX Crew Dragon with the International Space Station. On May 27, 2020, the first launch was withdrawn due to the weather condition, not in favour of the mission. However, Nasa & SpaceX rescheduled it for May 30, 2020, using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center.

It’s been a long journey of two decades for Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX to come this far, crossing all hurdles – as expected he was too emotional to express himself on creating history. At NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, in a press conference post-launch, he said, ” I’m really quite overcome with emotion on this day, so it’s kind of hard to talk, frankly. It’s been 18 years working towards this goal, so it’s hard to believe that it’s happened.”

“What Col. Douglas Hurley and Col. Robert Behnken did this afternoon was pure American genius and courage,” the president said during a post-launch speech at KSC today. “They joined the ranks of just seven prior American astronauts who have made the perilous maiden voyage to test a new class of spacecraft. Today, the groundbreaking partnership between NASA and SpaceX has given our nation the gift of an unmatched power — a state-of-the-art spaceship to put our astronauts into orbit at a fraction of the cost of the space shuttle. And it’s much better,” Trump said. He also added, ” “The same spirit which powered our astronauts to the moon has also helped lift our country to ever-greater heights of justice and opportunity throughout our history. So, today as we mark a renewed commitment to America’s future in space — a tremendous commitment it is — let us also commit to a brighter future for all of our citizens right here on Earth.”

In March 2019 SpaceX tested Crew Dragon spacecraft by launching Demo-1, wherein no human on-boarded only a test dummy called as “Ripley”. It was a week-long demonstration with International Space Station before sending actual astronauts – a crucial stage for SpaceX success which they just owned.

NASA & SpaceX haven’t specified the duration yet of this Demo-2 mission and calling back astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley home, however, they specified that it depends on the Crew Dragon Spacecraft in orbit before flying back to earth. The whole process would take up to 4 months to assess all the minor details before taking off Crew Dragon from ISS.

Here are some of the statements released by NASA: “Today a new era in human spaceflight begins as we once again launched American astronauts on American rockets from American soil on their way to the International Space Station, our national lab orbiting Earth,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. “I thank and congratulate Bob Behnken, Doug Hurley, and the SpaceX and NASA teams for this significant achievement for the United States. The launch of this commercial space system designed for humans is a phenomenal demonstration of American excellence and is an important step on our path to expand human exploration to the Moon and Mars.”

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