The “Resilience” spacecraft docked autonomously with the space station on Monday.
Washington:
Four astronauts transported into orbit by a SpaceX Crew Dragon boarded the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday, the first of what NASA hopes will be many routine missions ending the United States’ reliance on rockets Russian.
The “Resilience” spacecraft autonomously docked with the space station some 260 miles (400 kilometers) above the state of Ohio in the U.S. Midwest at 11:01 p.m. Monday (0401 GMT Tuesday), performing a 27.5 hour trip.
The three Americans on the crew – Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker – along with the Japanese Soichi Noguchi, each floated weightlessly through a hatch and onto the ISS, where they were cheered and kissed by the three members of the crew. crew of the station.
“Thank you for allowing me to say hello to all of you,” said Kathy Leuders, NASA’s chief human space flight program, in a video message to the astronauts. “I just want to tell you how proud we are of you.”
Previously, mission commander Hopkins had given pilot Glover his “gold pin,” a NASA tradition when an astronaut first crossed the 100-kilometer Karman Line marking the official space border.
Mr. Glover is the first black astronaut to make an extended stay at the ISS, while Mr. Noguchi is the first non-American to fly into orbit on a private spacecraft.
The crew joined two Russians and an American on board the station, and remained for six months.
SpaceX briefly transmitted live images from inside the capsule showing the astronauts in their seats, which neither the Russians nor the Americans had done before.
US President-elect Joe Biden hailed the launch on Twitter as a “testament to the power of science and what we can accomplish by harnessing our innovation, ingenuity and determination,” while President Donald Trump called it of “awesome”.
The Crew Dragon capsule earlier this week became the first spacecraft to be certified by NASA since the Space Shuttle nearly 40 years ago. Its launch vehicle is a reusable SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
At the end of its missions, the Crew Dragon deploys parachutes and then splashes into the water, just like in the days of Apollo.
SpaceX is expected to launch two more manned flights for NASA in 2021, including one in the spring, and four refueling missions over the next 15 months.
NASA turned to SpaceX and Boeing after shutting down the checkered space shuttle program in 2011, which failed in its primary goals of making space travel affordable and safe.
The agency will have spent more than $ 8 billion on the Commercial Crew program by 2024, in hopes that the private sector can support NASA’s “low earth orbit” needs to be released. to focus on the return missions to the Moon and then to Mars.
SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk in 2002, edged out much older rival Boeing, whose program failed after a failed test of its unequipped Starliner last year.
Russians are not impressed
But SpaceX’s success doesn’t mean the United States will stop hitchhiking with Russia altogether, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said. The goal is to have an “exchange of seats” between American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts.
Bridenstine also explained that it was necessary in case either of the programs were down for a while.
The reality, however, is that space ties between the United States and Russia – one of the few bright spots in their bilateral relationship – have frayed in recent years.
Russia has said it will not be a partner in the Artemis program to return to the moon in 2024, saying the NASA-led mission is too focused on the United States.
Dmitry Rogozin, the head of the Russian space agency, has also repeatedly mocked SpaceX’s technology, telling a state news agency he was not impressed by the “rather harsh landing. from Crew Dragon and claiming that his agency was developing a methane rocket that can be reused 100 times.
But the fact that a national space agency feels pressured to compare itself to a company undoubtedly validates NASA’s public-private strategy.
The emergence of SpaceX also deprived Roscosmos of a valuable revenue stream.
The cost of round-trip travel on Russian rockets had risen to around $ 85 million per astronaut, according to estimates last year.
Biden entering
Presidential transitions are always a tough time for NASA, and Joe Biden’s rise in January should be no different.
The agency has yet to receive from Congress the tens of billions of dollars needed to finalize the Artemis program.
Bridenstine has announced he will step down to let the new president set his own space exploration goals.
So far, Mr Biden has not commented on the 2024 timeline.
Democratic Party documents say it supports NASA’s aspirations to the Moon and Mars, but also insist on elevating the agency’s earth sciences division to better understand how climate change is affecting our planet.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
