After 64 days in space, NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken returned to Earth on Aug. 2, 2020 completing Demo-2, the agency’s first Commercial Crew mission. Liftoff atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket took place May 30, 2020, from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center. Due to Tropical Storm Isaias moving up the east coast of Florida, landing was moved to the Gulf of Mexico near Pensacola, Florida.
When NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken lifted off from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center on May 30, 2020, it marked the beginning of a new era of human spaceflight. When they arrived at the International Space Station, they marked the milestone by capturing an American flag in a competition that started almost a decade earlier.
A new era of human spaceflight launched at 3:22 p.m. EDT on May 30, 2020 as American astronauts once again lifted off on an American rocket from American soil headed for the International Space Station. The SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft successfully docked at the International Space Station the next day.
NASA has scheduled the first piloted flight launched by the United States since the final Space Shuttle mission in July 2011. The SpaceX Demonstration Mission-2 returns a human space flight capability to American soil for the first time in nine years ending the nation’s reliance on Russia to transport crews to the International Space Station.
A SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft lifts off atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 11:50 p.m. EST on March 6, 2020. The Dragon spacecraft will deliver more than 4,300 pounds of NASA cargo and science investigations to the International Space Station.
On Jan. 8, 2020, NASA astronaut Christina Koch became the first woman from any nation to pass the milestone of 300 days on a single spaceflight. Koch eclipsed the previous record of time in space for a woman, 289 days, on Dec. 28, 2019. NASA’s Peggy Whitson set the mark between Nov. 17, 2016 and Sept. 3, 2017.
American astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko participated in a one-year mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Twice as long as a typical crew, the effort was to learn more about the effects of microgravity on the human body.
NASA’s Commercial Crew Program took another step forward with the successful launch of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner on an unpiloted Orbital Flight Test (OFT). The United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lifted off at 6:36 a.m. on Dec. 20, 2019 from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
On Dec. 20, 2019 at 6:36 a.m. EST, Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner will liftoff atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The unpiloted Orbital Flight Test to the International Space Station will be the first for the company’s spacecraft as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station carrying a Dragon spacecraft on the company’s 19th Commercial Resupply Services mission to the International Space Station.