Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched four astronauts into orbit Sunday evening, marking the company’s first full-fledged operational mission with humans on board and beginning regularly scheduled commercial flights to the International Space Station.
Carrying a full complement of crew members, the mission boosted SpaceX’s stature as the first company approved by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to ferry people routinely into space. It also provided a capstone for the agency’s strategy of using public-private partnerships to accelerate human space exploration.
Blastoff of the Crew Dragon capsule, named Resilience, at 7:27 p.m. ET from Cape Canaveral, Fla., was the start of a roughly 27-hour trip to link up with the space station. It followed NASA’s formal decision last week designating SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule as safe to transport astronauts for routine crew rotation and other operational flights serving the international laboratory. Months before, two other NASA astronauts completed a smooth test flight of an earlier version of the capsule to the station.
The Falcon 9 slowly left the pad on Sunday precisely on schedule as required, churning out more than 1.3 million pounds of thrust, accelerating with a deep rumble and trailing a bright orange plume that illuminated the night sky. Roughly 12 minutes later, ground controllers announced the capsule separated safely from the rocket’s upper stage and its systems appeared to be operating normally.
A little earlier, the lower portion of the rocket, including its nine main engines, returned and gently touched down vertically on a specially outfitted ocean platform. SpaceX and NASA already have agreed to reuse that lower stage—something agency officials haven’t previously permitted for human flights—to power the company’s next commercial crew launch in the spring.
