CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida: A SpaceX rocket safely lifted off from Florida on Sunday (Mar 3) night carrying a crew of three US astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut on their way to the International Space Station (ISS) to begin a six-month science mission in Earth orbit.
The two-stage Falcon 9 rocket topped with an autonomously operated Crew Dragon capsule dubbed Endeavor was launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, along Florida’s Atlantic coast, at 10.53pm EST (3.53am GMT Monday).
A live NASA-SpaceX webcast showed the 25-storey-tall rocketship ascending from the launch tower as its nine Merlin engines roared to life in billowing clouds of vapor and a reddish fireball that lit up the night sky. The rocket consumes 700,000 gallons of fuel per second during launch, according to SpaceX.
The Falcon’s upper stage delivered Endeavor to its initial orbit nine minutes after liftoff, with live video from the cabin showing the four crew members strapped in side by side garbed in their helmeted white-and-black flight suits.
“What an incredible ride to orbit,” astronaut Matthew Dominick, 42, the flight commander and one of three spaceflight rookies aboard the capsule, radioed to control outside of Los Angeles. “A big thank-you to SpaceX.”
“Really honored to fly this new-generation spaceship with this new-generation crew,” NASA veteran Dr Michael Barratt, 64, chimed in from his seat beside Dominick.
The four crew members were scheduled to reach the space station early on Tuesday after a 16-hour flight, docking with the orbital laboratory some 420km above Earth.
Designated Crew 8, the mission marks the eighth long-duration ISS team that NASA has flown aboard a SpaceX launch vehicle since the private rocket venture founded in 2002 by billionaire Elon Musk and headquartered near Los Angeles began sending US astronauts to orbit in May 2020.
The latest ISS crew was led by Dominick, a US Navy test pilot making his first trip to orbit, and Barratt, a physician who has logged two previous flights to the space station and two spacewalks. Barratt is serving as mission pilot.
Rounding out the team are fellow NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps, 53, an aerospace engineer and former technical intelligence officer for the CIA, and cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, 41, a former military aircraft engineer. Both he and Epps, like Dominick, are spaceflight rookies.
Source: CNA
