SpaceX’s Dragon Crew-1 capsule, with 4 astronauts aboard, on way to ISS

After blasting off from Kennedy Space Center, the big moment in the flight of SpaceX’s Crew-1 mission was the entry of the capsule, with its four astronauts, into orbit. That took place as scheduled about 12 minutes into the flight.

But another key moment for the future of NASA’s commercial crew program had happened just a few minutes before when the first stage booster of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully detached from and landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The recovery of the booster rocket is central to the partnership between SpaceX and NASA — and to SpaceX’s plans to seriously reduce the cost of routine flights to the International Space Station.

The seemingly seamless countdown and launch of four astronauts to the International Space Station on Sunday came with a spectacular evening liftoff just days after the company’s Dragon capsule became the first privately owned and operated spacecraft to be certified by NASA for human spaceflight.

But the road to this point was long and at times tortured.

NASA first entrusted the private sector to fly cargo and supplies to the space station in 2008 under the George W. Bush administration, awarding contracts to SpaceX and a company that was then known as Orbital Sciences and has since been subsumed by Northrup Grumman.

President-elect Biden hasn’t talked much about space or what his administration’s plans are for it. But it has appointed a transition team that will help guide the new administration. Leading the effort is Ellen Stofan, the head of the National Air and Space Museum and NASA’s former chief scientist.

SpaceX will still be launching crews to the station. But other programs seem less certain. The new administration is likely to keep the Trump administration’s Artemis program to return to the moon, Democratic officials have said. But instead of pushing to get astronauts there by 2024, as the Trump White House has mandated, NASA would likely aim for a more realistic goal sometime after that.

SpaceX has completed loading propellant on the Falcon 9 rocket in a crucial late-stage step before astronauts launch into space.

The fueling stage involves two main components, the loading of rocket-grade kerosene and liquid oxygen, which creates the massive plumes of what appears as white smoke — the oxygen changing from liquid form into gas form around the rocket in Florida’s humid air.

Before the propellants were loaded, the launch escape system was armed. That system allows the crew to abort from any point on the launchpad all the way up to orbit. In the event of an emergency, the capsule would propel itself off the Falcon 9 rocket, splashing down off the coast, in a rescue scenario. NASA and SpaceX tout the ability to abort from the pad or midflight as a safety upgrade, which the shuttle program lacked.

TOKYO — Experienced Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi will become the first non-American to fly on a mission launched by SpaceX, and his participation has been welcomed with excitement and pride in his home country.

The 55-year-old previously flew inside the space shuttle Discovery in 2005, and also used a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to reach the International Space Station for a 161-day stay between 2009 and 2010. He’s determined to show he is still up to the job.

“My physical and cognitive abilities will be challenged but I want to compete with the younger generation by duping them with my experience,” he said in an online conversation with Japan’s science and technology minister in October, Kyodo News reported. “I want to hang in there to keep up with the younger generation.”

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — In May, SpaceX pulled off a successful test flight that sent a pair of NASA astronauts, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, for a two-month stay on the International Space Station. Now, NASA has certified the company for regular flights to the station and back, carrying full contingents of up to four astronauts for even longer visits to the station. That marks the first time a commercial company has been authorized to fly NASA astronauts to the space station.

NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration and operations mission directorate, Kathy Lueders, said the certification is NASA’s way of telling SpaceX, “You can safely fly our crew members to and from the International Space Station. You’ve shown us the data, and we trust you to do that. There’s a big trust factor here. This is a big step for us.”

At the International Space Station, global cooperation spans languages.

The three people already at the ISS communicate with each other in a mix of English and Russian, NASA said, allowing American Kate Rubins and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov to speak with one another seamlessly.

In addition to their technical skills and scientific expertise, all NASA astronauts learn to speak Russian. So when the crew of the SpaceX mission reaches the ISS, they too will put their Russian language skills to use. While cosmonauts Ryzhikov and Kud-Sverchkov most likely speak with each other in their native language, NASA said, all of the crew members communicate in a mix of English and Russian.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA has a policy that bars anyone with a positive coronavirus test from entering the Kennedy Space Center. That’s one reason Elon Musk, Space X’s founder and chief executive, won’t be present for Sunday’s launch.

On Friday, Musk tweeted that he had taken four coronavirus tests and that two had come back positive, and two, negative. He said he had minor symptoms, including a fever but was feeling okay.

But that sent SpaceX and NASA scrambling to determine if Musk had had contact with anyone who would have had contact with the astronauts. By the afternoon, SpaceX determined that the astronauts, who have been in quarantine for weeks, had not been exposed.