The second launch of NASA's Commercial Crew took place today at 05:49 local time from Kennedy Space Center. The SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft Endeavour took four crew members to the International Space Station: NASA astronaut and pilot Megan McArthur, NASA astronaut and commander Shane Kimbrough, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas Pesquet.
This is the second official mission in which NASA has partnered with SpaceX to launch astronauts to the ISS and it's the third crewed mission from SpaceX.
SpaceX completed the first crewed test of its Crew Dragon capsule in summer 2020. Demo-2, as it was called, had astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley reaching and staying in the ISS for a few months. The first official launch was SpaceX Crew-1 in November 2020 when the Crew Dragon Resilience took NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker and JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi. to space. They are coming back next week.
The Crew Dragon was launched on top of a Falcon 9 rocket. After the launch, the rocket's first stage successfully completed a vertical landing on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship.
You can watch the launch below:
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