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SpaceX becomes the First Private Company to successfully arrange a Crewed Mission
A SpaceX Space Shuttle carried two veteran NASA Astronauts to the International Space Station, sets history to be the First Private Firm to arrange a crewed Mission. This also ushered a new era of space travel.
The two-stage Falcon 9 rocket with astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley launched smoothly and the whole United States saw smoke from Florida's Kennedy Space Center for the 19-hour voyage to the orbiting space station.
"Let's light this candle," Hurley, the spacecraft mission commander, told SpaceX mission control in Hawthorne, California, before liftoff at 3:22 pm (1922 GMT) from NASA's fabled Launch Pad 39A.
After the space shuttle program ended in the US Soil in 2011, Elon Musk's SpaceX is the first commercial company to host a space mission that sends astronauts into orbit.
"This is a dream come true for me and everyone at SpaceX," Musk said.
"Demo-2," ends a government funding on space flight and is the final test flight before NASA certifies SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule for regular crewed missions. After the certification, SpaceX will schedule this mission whenever requires.
Behnken, 49, and Hurley, 53, former military test pilots who joined NASA in 2000, are scheduled to dock with the space station at 10:29 am (1429 GMT) on Sunday.
They will join US astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner who are waiting for Behnken and Hurley in the International Space Station.
