SpaceX Sends Four Astronauts on a NASA Mission to Outer Space

In the first 10 minutes after launch, the rocket’s second stage had sent a crew capsule into Earth orbit, at a speed of nearly 27,500 km / h, according to launch commentators.

The rocket’s first stage, meanwhile, descends back to Earth and lands safely on a landing platform floating in the Atlantic aboard an unmanned ship called Of Course I Still Love You.

The mission marks the second “operational” space station team NASA will launch aboard the Dragon Crew capsule since the United States returned to space from US soil last year, following a nine-year lull at the end of the US space shuttle. program in 2011.

It is also the third crewed flight launched into orbit under NASA’s public-private partnership with SpaceX, the rocket company founded and owned by Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur and CEO of electric car maker Tesla.

The first was an exit and retreat test mission that brought only two astronauts into orbit last May, followed by SpaceX’s first four full crew members in November.

The Crew 2 team consisted of two NASA astronauts – mission commander Shane Kimbrough (53) and pilot Megan McArthur (49) along with Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide (52) and fellow mission specialist Thomas Pesquet (43) a French engineer from the European Space Agency.

The four crew members, dressed in white flight suits and black boots, are briefly seen sitting side by side in the capsule just after reaching orbit in the video clip captured by the onboard camera.

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