NASA and SpaceX have set a date for the first crewed space mission to be launched into orbit from U.S. soil since the space shuttle fleet’s retirement nearly nine years ago.
- SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is due to launch NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley inside a SpaceX Crew Dragon spaceship at 4:32 p.m. ET (1:32 p.m. PT) May 27, sending them to the International Space Station for an extended stay. Liftoff will take place at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the Apollo 11 moon mission and the first shuttle mission were launched.
- Today’s announcement of a launch date comes after years of development by SpaceX under the terms of a multibillion-dollar contract with NASA. Boeing is working on a different type of space taxi for the space station, known as the CST-100 Starliner – but an uncrewed test flight last December ran into glitches, with the result that Starliner’s first crewed flight won’t take place for months.
- A successful Dragon demonstration mission would reduce the need to put U.S. astronauts on Russian Soyuz spacecraft, for which NASA has been paying the Russians upwards of $80 million per seat. There’ll be an added perk for Behnken and Hurley: They’ll be able to claim a U.S. flag that was left aboard the space station by the last space shuttle crew in 2011 for the next crew to launch from American soil.
