Explained: What is SpaceX-NASA’s upcoming Crew-1 mission launch?

Context: SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft will lift off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida carrying a crew of four people to the International Space Station (ISS) on a six-month-long mission.

• NASA certified SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule and the Falcon 9 rocket, making it the first spacecraft certification provided by the space agency.
• This means SpaceX can now operate regular flights to the space station.
• These integrated spacecraft, rockets and associated systems will carry up to four astronauts on NASA missions, maintaining a space station crew of seven to maximize time dedicated to scientific research on the orbiting laboratory.
• NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 test flight lifted off for the ISS, becoming the first crewed flight to launch from American soil since the conclusion of the space shuttle era in 2011.

So what is the Crew-1 mission?

• The mission is part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, whose objective is to make access to space easier in terms of its cost, so that cargo and crew can be easily transported to and from the ISS, enabling greater scientific research.
• Significantly, Crew-1 will be the first operational flight of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft on a Falcon 9 rocket to the ISS.

What will members of Crew-1 do at the ISS?

• The goals of the mission are the same as that of Expedition 1 that lifted off 20 years ago.
• NASA has called both of these ISS missions “historic”.
• At the ISS, the Crew-1 team will join members of Expedition 64 and conduct microgravity studies and deliver new science hardware and experiments that they will carry with them to space aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft.

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