SpaceX arrives at International Space Station • Earth.com

SpaceX arrives at International Space Station

SpaceX arrives at International Space Station. Today’s Image of the Day from NASA Earth Observatory features the SpaceX Crew Dragon as it approaches the International Space Station.

NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley lifted off on May 30, 2020 from NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida. 

Behnken and Hurley named their spacecraft Endeavour as a tribute to the first space shuttle that both astronauts had flown on.

When Endeavour reached the ISS, both were about 262 miles above the northern border of China and Mongolia. 

SpaceX’s achievements include the first privately funded liquid-propellant rocket to reach orbit (Falcon 1 in 2008), the first private company to successfully launch, orbit, and recover a spacecraft (Dragon in 2010), the first private company to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station (Dragon in 2012), the first Vertical take-off and vertical propulsive landing for an orbital rocket (Falcon 9 in 2015), the first reuse of an orbital rocket (Falcon 9 in 2017), the first private company to launch an object into orbit around the Sun (Falcon Heavy‘s payload of a Tesla Roadster in 2018), and the first private company to send astronauts to orbit and to the International Space Station (SpaceX Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission in 2020). SpaceX has flown 20  cargo resupply missions to the International Space Station (ISS) under a partnership with NASA,  as well as an uncrewed demonstration flight of the human-rated Dragon 2 spacecraft (Crew Demo-1) on 2 March 2019, and the first crewed Dragon 2 flight on 30 May 2020

By Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com Staff Writer

Image Credit: NASA

 

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