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UPDATED 3:44 PM PT – Friday, October 7, 2022
For the first time, SpaceX has launched two separate missions in a single day.
On Wednesday, the commercial space flight company SpaceX launched multiple missions. At the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, a Falcon Nine rocket loaded with 52 Starlink satellites took flight just after 4 pm local time. This marked the 63rd consecutive launch for the program with not a single failure to deploy the satellites.
The Falcon Nine rocket, with its continuity of consistently landing after launching payloads into orbit since 2017 with only a few failures to land, wasn’t the highlighted moment of the day.
Just a few hours earlier, a joint mission with SpaceX and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration launched the maiden voyage of the Dragon capsule. The Dragon capsule is a commercial transport vessel aimed at sending crew and supplies to the International Space Station.
The Director of the Commercial Space Division at NASA, Phil McAlister, has worked hard with SpaceX, making sure that the partnership between the government agency and the commercial company benefits both parties.
“SpaceX benefits for more 50 years of human space flight experience but we also benefit commercial companies and how they do business and how innovative they can be,” McAlister said. “We find there’s new ways in doing things that maybe we haven’t thought of. So, I’ve seen the partnership as benefiting both groups it’s kind of like when we first started working with the Russians. They had a very different way of doing business and I think that both programs benefited from that experience.”
McAlister also spoke about how NASA plans to allow more commercial companies to find success in space.
“I think it all started with the Commercial Cargo Program in 2005,” he said. “I think that was the first real commercial partnership that we had, especially in the human space flight side. Then we had this cargo capability and then we advance that to crew. Now we can launch people into lower orbit in the International Space Station and the thing that we have in our horizon, the thing I’m working on right now, is destinations or commercial space stations. We know that space stations, the International Space Station, is going be retired in 2030. We need to have continuous access to space and a destination to go to so now we want commercial companies to build a private space station where we can just be one of many customers.”
The mission has had a difficult road to launch in the last few weeks. The Crew-5 launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, almost fell through due to Hurricane Ian. NASA postponed the mission for over a week to ensure good weather conditions. Luckily, Ian weakened just as it passed over the launch site. The hurricane did not cause any major damage to the structures.
The crew on the flight consisted of three astronauts and one cosmonaut. Those onboard included mission specialists Koichi Wakata of Japan and Anna Kikina of Russia. The pilot for the mission is Captain Josh Cassada. Cassada is a Navy test pilot, an instructor and an astronaut. The commander of the mission is Colonel Nicole Mann. Mann is a Marine Corps officer and a mechanical engineer. She is made history by being the first Native American woman in space.
Once the crew reached the Space Station, they unloaded multiple projects aimed at advancing science on earth through study in space, which has been a staple of the ISS mission for years.
Mike Roberts, the Chief Scientist for the ISS National Laboratory spoke about the mission.
“It certainly is a beautiful day here and we look forward to getting the science off the ground,” Roberts said. “It’s a very busy time for orbit for the crew because they are very busy not only maintaining the science portfolio of NASA so that we can continue to live and operate in space. They’re also conducting science in space that will benefit us directly on Earth and that’s an important part of why the ISS National Laboratory exists.”
The Dragon capsule launched successfully. Its accompanying Falcon Nine rocket landed with no issues shortly after.
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