NASA’s eight crewed flight aboard Elon Musk’s SpaceX Dragon spacecraft sent four astronauts from the United States, Denmark, Japan and Russia to the International Space Station on Saturday.
The Crew 7 mission team, which also includes Russians Konstantin Borisov, Satoshi Furukawa and Denmark’s Andreas Mogensen, is led by American Jasmine Mogbeli.
At 3:27 a.m. (07:27 GMT), the Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon spacecraft blasted off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in front of about 10,000 spectators.
“We have liftoff!” NASA said on X, formerly known as Twitter.
We have liftoff! Endurance ascends to space. Next stop for #Crew7: the @Space_Station. pic.twitter.com/UW5Db3HH7C
— NASA (@NASA) August 26, 2023
Immediately after the Falcon 9 rocket broke off with the Dragon vehicle crew on board, the mission control area erupted in jubilation, Al Jazeera reported.
“We may have four crew members from four different countries … but we are a united team with a common mission,” Mogbeli said after parting ways.
According to a NASA blog post, the launch was delayed until Saturday to give engineers an extra day to inspect part of the Crew Dragon capsule’s environmental control and life support system.
After docking with a human outpost 400 kilometers (249 miles) above Earth in less than 24 hours, the spacecraft will return the four crew members to Earth in a few days.
This is Moghbili and Borisov’s first space flight.
“This is something I’ve wanted to do for as long as I can remember,” Moghbeli, a naval test pilot, said during a media call last month.
“The one thing I’m most excited about is seeing our beautiful planet,” the 40-year-old American added.
“Everyone I’ve spoken to who’s flown has already said it was a life-changing approach – and floating in space, too, looks really fun.”
The first routine trip to an orbital platform for Elon Musk’s SpaceX was launched in 2020, and Crew 7 is the seventh.
NASA pays SpaceX for the taxi service, as part of a commercial crew program it established to reduce its reliance on Russian rockets to transport astronauts after the Space Shuttle program ended in 2011. what was
The other contracted private partner is Boeing, although its program is still plagued by delays and technical problems. It has not yet flown a crew.
Borisov will be the third Russian to take to the skies aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft aboard a Falcon 9 rocket.
