SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft Successfully docks 2 NASA Astronauts at ISS after historic launch
- SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft successfully docked two NASA astronauts, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, at the International Space Station (ISS) in a historic launch on 31 May 2020, from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Falcon 9 rocket.
- This is the first time in human history that NASA Astronauts have entered the Space Station from a commercially-made spacecraft, and also assumes significance as it marks the launch of humans into orbit from US soil for the first time in nearly a decade, since the Space Shuttle was retired in 2011.
- With this launch, Elon Musk’s SpaceX company has become the first private company to launch people into the orbit, a feat achieved previously by only three governments the US, Russia and China.
- It was also a test flight designed to see how the spacecraft, which had never flown humans before, performed.