The NASA/SpaceX Crew 1 mission of four astronauts successfully launched to the International Space Station (ISS) this evening at 7:27 p.m. EST (Monday 00:27 UTC). All systems performed as intended and docking at the ISS should take place around 11 p.m. EST Monday evening (Tuesday 04:00 UTC). All of the years of work on this system have paid off. The NASA announcer as the rocket cleared the launch pad into the sky said: “Not even gravity contains humanity when we explore as one for all!”
President Donald Trump celebrated this success, tweeting “A great launch! @NASA was a closed up disaster when we took over. Now it is again the ‘hottest’, most advanced, space center in the world, by far!”
Meanwhile, SpaceX is still planning on flying a Starship prototype to high altitude before the end of the year; NASA and Boeing are planning to fly an unmanned Starliner spacecraft into orbit and back early next year, and an unmanned Orion spacecraft around the Moon in preparation for later manned flights of both systems. China also recently launched an unmanned prototype of a new manned spacecraft which could be used for lunar missions. It is an exciting time in aerospace engineering!
