NASA, SpaceX target historic spaceflight despite pandemic
NASA and SpaceX said Friday these were pressing ahead with plans to launch astronauts to space from US soil for the first time in nearly ten years down the road this month, despite the coronavirus pandemic.
Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley, both veterans of the area Shuttle program that was shuttered in 2011, will blast off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida on May 27.
If the mission succeed, the united states could have achieved its goal of no more needing to buy seats on Russian Soyuz rockets to provide its astronauts rides to the International Space Station (ISS).
It is also a crucial stage in NASA's new monetary model: the space agency has spent billions on contracts with both SpaceX and Boeing to develop spaceships that will each need to make six round trips to the ISS.
The model is supposed to save lots of taxpayers from financial black holes of past programs, in addition to some still to come -- notably the giant Space Launch System rocket that's supposed to take NASA back again to the Moon but is plagued by cost overrun and scheduling delays.
NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine told reporters that the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule will be only the fifth class folks spacecraft to take humans into orbit, following the storied Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Space Shuttle programs.
"In the event that you look globally, this would be the ninth amount of time in history whenever we put humans on a whole new spacecraft," said Bridenstine.
"We will do it within the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. I'll tell you that is a higher priority mission for the United States of America," he added.
Behnken and Hurley, who've been training for the "Demo-2" mission for a long time, will dock with the International Space Station (ISS) and remain there for between someone to four months, according to when another mission takes place, said NASA's Steve Stich.
Crew Dragon is able to remain in orbit for around four months (119 days).
Hurley, who was simply the pilot on the last Space Shuttle mission, admitted it had been "disappointing" that the launch will not be a public affair, with crowds discouraged from gathering at Cape Canaveral to witness the spectacle.
"We won't have the luxury of our family and friends being there at Kennedy to view the launch but it's obviously, the proper thing to do in today's environment," he said.
- Win for SpaceX -
The mission is a major milestone for SpaceX, the business founded by Elon Musk, who also leads and founded Tesla.
His firm, which was started in 2002, has now overtaken aerospace behemoth Boeing, which failed in the uncrewed demonstration mission of its Starliner spacecraft last year and will have to get started on over.
SpaceX, which includes received vast amounts of dollars from NASA because the late 2000s, has been supplying cargo to the ISS since 2012, and has generated itself as the first choice in the private space sector because of its reusable rocket, the Falcon 9.
"I'll feel just a little relief when they're in orbit, I'll feel more relief when they get to the station and obviously, I will start sleeping again when they're back safely on earth Earth," said Gwynne Shotwell, the business's chief operating officer.
The pandemic has, naturally, impacted the program, but Shotwell said all precautions were being taken up to protect the astronauts.
"We are making certain only essential personnel are near them. They're wearing masks and gloves. We're cleaning working out facility twice daily.
"I believe we're really performing a great job to ensure that we are not impacting the safety or the fitness of the astronauts' lives."
Half of SpaceX's engineers have already been teleworking, and on your day of the launch, NASA personnel in the mission control room will be spaced six feet (two meters) apart.
Takeoff is scheduled for 4:42 pm (2042 GMT) on, may 27, with space station docking scheduled about 19 hours later, on May 28.
Source: www.theindependentbd.com
