SpaceX Launches with Four Members Aboard the Dragon

On Sunday night, four astronauts were lifted off to space on the SpaceX Crew Dragon at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It was conducted by NASA and the four astronauts, Mike Hopkins, Shannon Walker, Victor Glove, and Soichi Noguchi.

This is NASA’s first established mission sending a crew of four astronauts into orbit on a privately owned spacecraft. Previously, NASA relied on Russian spacecrafts to get American astronauts into low orbit and spent almost a decade paying for seats on Russian spacecrafts. Now with the Dragon, their hope of ending the dependence with Russia to get astronauts into low earth orbit are achieved.

The four astronauts will remain in the SpaceX Dragon Capsule until spring, where other four astronauts will board a different SpaceX Dragon Capsule. SpaceX’s Benji Reed explains that the company expects to launch seven Dragons over the next 14 months. The SpaceX Crew Dragon can carry up to 7 passengers into orbit. The four astronauts named the spacecraft Resilience referring to all the challenges 2020 gave this year. Mike Hopkin said, “It’s been a tough year for everybody for a lot of different reasons. We felt like if the name of our vehicle could give a little hope, a little inspiration, put a smile on people’s faces, then that is
definitely what we wanted to do.”

Sources used:
https://apnews.com/article/astronauts-arrive-spacex-launch-site-
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https://www.npr.org/2020/11/15/934185926/astronauts-prepare-to-launch-to-space-station-
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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-exploration-spacex-launch/spacex-rocket-carrying-
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