Manila, Philippines – “We have taken off. History has been written “
The “Crew Dragon” mission has started from the Cape Canaveral spaceport to the international space station. Now two US astronauts have to travel for 19 hours to ISS (International Space Station)
The first SpaceX rocket with two American astronauts on board was successfully launched from the Cape Canaveral spaceport in Florida. Astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley took off at 3:22 a.m. (time in Philippines) or 3:00 pm eastern time . The start should have been on Wednesday, but was postponed due to the weather.
The US space agency Nasa shared a video of the launch on Twitter. It is the first time in nine years that a manned mission has started again from the Florida spaceport.
The successful start is also of strategic importance for the USA: “Crew Dragon” is intended to seal the end of American dependence on Russian “Soyuz” capsules. Due to the lack of in-house technology, the Nasa personnel had had to fly from Baikonur in Kazakhstan to orbit since 2011.
The cooperation with SpaceX , the space service company from Elon Musk , is also intended to make flights into space cheaper for the Americans. A seat in a capsule of the Russians had recently cost the US around 80 million, while a place in the “Crew Dragon”, according to Nasa, only costs around 55 million dollars.
