CALIFORNIA: A SpaceX rocket with an unmanned crew capsule blasted off on Saturday for the International Space Station, in a key milestone for Elon Musk’s space company and NASA’s long-delayed goal to resume human spaceflight from U.S. soil later this year.
SpaceX’s 4.9-metre-tall Crew Dragon capsule, atop a Falcon 9 rocket, lifted off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center at 2:49 a.m. ET, carrying a test dummy nicknamed Ripley.
The capsule successfully separated from the rocket about 11 minutes later, sparking cheers in the control room, and began its journey to the space station.
“I almost thought we would fail. I thought maybe we’d have a 10 per cent chance of reaching orbit starting out,” Silicon Valley billionaire Musk said of his feelings when he founded the space company in 2002.
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, speaks during a news conference after the SpaceX Falcon 9 Demo-1 launch at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Saturday, March 2, 2019. (John Raoux/Associated Press)
“I’m a little emotionally exhausted because that was super stressful, but it worked,” he told reporters after Saturday’s launch.
The space station’s three-member crew was expected to greet the capsule, carrying 181 kilograms of supplies and test equipment, early Sunday morning, NASA said.
During its five-day stay, U.S. astronaut Anne McClain and Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques will run tests and inspect Crew Dragon’s cabin.
NASA has awarded SpaceX and Boeing Co $6.8 billion US to build competing rocket and capsule systems to launch astronauts into orbit from American soil for the first time since the U.S. Space Shuttle was retired from service in 2011.
