Three American astronauts and a Japanese took off Sunday from Florida to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a SpaceX rocket, NASA’s new means of space transportation after nine years of dependence on Russia.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifted off safely on schedule from the Kennedy Space Center with Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and Soichi Noguchi aboard the capsule attached to the top. The takeoff, in the evening, illuminated the entire Florida coast.
The first stage detached quickly before returning to land on a drone ship, SpaceX’s trademark. Twelve minutes after takeoff, at an altitude of 200 km and a speed of 27,000 km / h, the capsule itself detached from the second stage. SpaceX confirmed it was on the right orbit to join the ISS just over 27 hours later, around 4 a.m. GMT on Tuesday.
They will meet there two Russians and an American, and will stay there six months, spinning around the Earth at 400 km above the oceans. SpaceX briefly broadcast live images of the interior of the aircraft showing the astronauts in their seats, which neither the Russians nor the Americans had done before. This first “operational” flight follows the successful demonstration mission of May to August, during which two American astronauts were taken to the ISS and then safely returned to Earth by SpaceX.
As European astronaut Thomas Pesquet tweeted, the first stage of the rocket will be reused for the mission that will take him and three teammates in spring 2021 to the station.
“NASA was a disaster when we took matters into our own hands. Today it is the most popular and the most advanced space center in the world, by far! ” tweeted President Donald Trump.
The man who will replace him in January, Joe Biden, also praised NASA and SpaceX with a tweet. “It is proof of the power of science and of what we can accomplish by combining innovation, inventiveness and determination,” tweeted the Democratic President-elect.
A problem with the interior climate control system occurred, but was quickly fixed, according to SpaceX.
Dragon is the only aircraft currently capable of reaching the ISS with the very reliable Russian Soyuz, which has since 2011 routed all visitors to the station, after the shutdown of American shuttles.
Uncertainty about Artemis
It took the Americans nine years to certify the successor to the shuttles, with public-private partnerships. A second aircraft, Starliner, manufactured by Boeing, could be operational in a year.
NASA hopes to continue cooperation with Russia. She has offered seat swaps, but negotiations between NASA and Roskosmos are dragging on.
The reality is that the ties between Washington and Moscow in the space domain, one of the few where they remained good, are weakening. Breaking with more than 20 years of cooperation on the ISS, Russia will not participate in the next ministry wanted by NASA around the moon, the Gateway.
Roskosmos boss Dmitry Rogozin has made SpaceX his pet peeve. Besides becoming NASA’s carrier of choice, the company is the market leader in private satellite launches, and it has forced Russia to review its aging space program.
This summer, Roskosmos announced a project for a new reusable rocket, “not semi-reusable like at SpaceX,” said Dmitri Rogozine. “Our engineers […] do not want to repeat what their colleagues at SpaceX are doing, but surpass them ”.
But the mere fact that Roskosmos compares itself to a private company illustrates the new era the world has entered since the 2010s: space is no longer the monopoly of states.
As for the American Artemis program to return to the moon in 2024, NASA has not yet received from Congress the tens of billions of dollars needed to finalize it. And the next president has not taken over the 2024 target.