Elon Musk's SpaceX launched a four-astronaut team to the International Space Station (ISS) using a recycled rocket and the Dragon capsule that the company's debut crew had used last year. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with the Crew Dragon capsule, carrying four astronauts on a NASA commercial crew mission, was launched at the the Kennedy Space Center on April 23.

The four astronauts who hail from the US, Japan and France are expected to reach International Space Station early on April 24 and will spend six months in space.

French astronaut Thomas Pesquet has become the first European to board a SpaceX Crew Dragon, reports said. The other three crew members on the mission are NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, NASA said.

The recent pack of astronauts is the third NASA crew that SpaceX has sent to the ISS in the past 12 months under its multibillion-dollar contract with the US space agency under the Commercial Crew Program.

Shane Kimbrough is commander of the Crew Dragon spacecraft and the Crew-2 mission while Megan McArthur is the pilot of the spacecraft and second-in-command for the mission. Akihiko Hoshide and Thomas Pesquet are the mission specialists for Crew-2.

SpaceX did a full dress rehearsal for Crew-2 on Sunday with the four member group practicing suiting up and driving out to the launchpad in the pair of Tesla Model Xs that SpaceX uses for crew transportation.

Crew Dragon will be delivering about 250 pounds of cargo, new science hardware and experiments including a university student-led investigation to study possible causes for suppressed immune response in microgravity, a NASA statement read.

(Edited by : Jerome)

First Published:Apr 23, 2021 5:40 PM IST