The long-awaited launch of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, carrying astronauts for the first time, had to be postponed after the mission was canceled just minutes before departure. About 5 million people were waiting live for the launch, which would be broadcast on SpaceX and NASA social networks.
Now the Dragon Crew capsule should take astronauts to the International Space Station next Saturday (30), at 16:22 pm (Brasília time).
As is SpaceX tradition, the mission will be broadcast live tomorrow (27/05), on the company's and NASA's YouTube channels, you can follow everything in the video below. The official broadcast starts at 12:00 (Brasília time).
The last launch of an astronaut directly by NASA occurred with the Space Shuttle in 2011, when the Atlantis ascended for the last time into space, marking the STS-135 mission, the last of 135.
Astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley, from NASA, will be responsible for this historic mission with the Falcon 9 rocket, which will have mutual monitoring between NASA and SpaceX.
The great highlight of the Dragon Crew capsule is to maintain a more “advanced” development schedule in relation to Boeing's CST-100, at half the price. This brings NASA's schedule forward, so that it has less dependence on Russia for launching astronauts.
In preparation for Demo-2, SpaceX has completed several important milestones for NASA's Commercial Crew Program.
In March 2019, SpaceX completed Dragon Crew's first demonstration mission to the International Space Station, an end-to-end test flight of Crew Dragon without NASA astronauts on board, making Dragon the first American spacecraft to dock. autonomously with the International Space Station and return safely to Earth.
In January, SpaceX successfully completed a flight test of the Dragon capsule's escape capabilities. This test, which did not have NASA astronauts aboard the spacecraft, demonstrated Dragon Crew's ability to safely transport the crew to safety in the unlikely event of an emergency climb.
