NASA astronauts arrive at the International Space Station aboard the SpaceX spacecraft | The National Gazette

A Falcon 9 rocket lit up at dawn at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. It is SpaceX’s third manned mission. Entrepreneur Elon Musk, who runs SpaceX, says it is the beginning of a new space era, the era of commercial space exploration.

Now, the gear is much cheaper because the equipment is recycled. The Falcon rocket has already been used. After launch, he returned to Earth for future missions.

The Dragon Endeavor spacecraft, with four astronauts on board, visited the International Space Station in May 2020. Another SpaceX spacecraft, Dragon Resilience, has been attached to the station since November. He also escorted four astronauts and returned to Earth on Wednesday (28).

Endeavor arrived at the station at dawn on Saturday (24). The coupling was fully automatic controlled by the onboard computers. The astronauts, two Americans, a Japanese, a French, a Russians and an American, were received by colleagues from the previous SpaceX mission, who arrived at the station in early April.

With 11 on board, the maximum capacity gives the impression of overcrowding. However, the station has six crew sleeping rooms. All of them have been vaccinated and tested for Covid-19. When the elastic class leaves, on the 28th, it will be most comfortable. In October, Resilience returns four more astronauts.

SpaceX’s ships ended for a long time when the Americans relied on Russian ships to go into space. For Russia, it was pretty cool: In total, NASA paid $ 5 billion for the transportation. But that source dried up and Russia announced that it would leave the international terminal in 2025 and build its own.