SpaceX Successfully Launches Second Crewed Mission to ISS

Ellise Shafer
·2 min read

SpaceX successfully sent four astronauts on a six-month journey to the International Space Station on Sunday night, in the company’s second crewed mission for NASA.

After the mission was delayed yesterday due to poor weather, a Crew Dragon spacecraft called “Resilience” launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on top of a Falcon 9 rocket at 7:27 p.m. ET.

The crew consisted of NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Mike Hopkins and Shannon Walker, as well as Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Soichi Noguchi. Glover is the first Black astronaut to participate in a long-duration mission to the ISS. They will spend approximately 27.5 hours in orbit before they arrive at the station.

At approximately 7:40 p.m., the Crew Dragon spacecraft separated from Falcon 9’s stage and officially began its mission. SpaceX estimates that the craft will dock at ISS around 11 p.m. tomorrow.

In May of this year, SpaceX also launched the “Demo-2” mission, in which two astronauts went to the ISS on a test flight.

On Oct. 12, it was announced that HBO is developing a scripted series based on SpaceX and its famous founder, Elon Musk, executive produced by Channing Tatum. The series will be six episodes long and adapted from the book “Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future” by Ashlee Vance. It will follow Musk in his pursuit of making humankind a multi-planetary species, and will document Musk’s process of picking a team of engineers to work on a remote Pacific Island where they build and launch the first SpaceX rocket into orbit.

Watch the launch below.

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