Courtesy, NASA-SpaceX
Florida is back in space and better than ever with NASA and a friendly new face: SpaceX. Tomorrow, SpaceX and NASA are launching the first American astronauts into space from U.S. soil since the Space Shuttle Program ended in 2011. Lift-off is scheduled for 4:33pm ET. NASA Astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley will fly from Cape Canaveral, Florida to the International Space Station (ISS) as part of the SpaceX Demo-2 program.
NASA’s Commercial Crew, partnered with SpaceX and Boeing, is preparing to “lead an innovative and sustainable program of exploration with commercial and international partners to enable human expansion across the solar system and to bring back to Earth new knowledge and opportunities.” This program presents an opportunity to execute a Moon-to-Mars plan with a two phase approach: first, land on the moon within the next five years and then establish a lasting human presence on and around the Moon by 2024. What knowledge and experience are gained from this time on the Moon will then be used to develop the next giant leap forward – a manned mission to Mars.
Tomorrow’s launch to the ISS is designed to help develop a U.S. Commercial Crew space transportation capability partnered with U.S. Companies, with the goal of achieving secure, dependable and cost-efficient access to and from the ISS and other targets in low-Earth orbit.
While NASA was founded in 1958, the birth of U.S. space flight began in July 1950 with the launch of the first rocket from Cape Canaveral: the Bumper 2, an ambitious two-stage rocket program that topped a V-2 missile base with a Corporal rocket. Given Florida’s rich history of space exploration, tomorrow’s launch is expected to draw larger crowds into the thousands. In the context of Florida’s reopening amidst the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, a chain of locally-owned beach shops, Beachwave Beachware, has partnered with the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office to donate and hand out 20,000 protective masks to those spectators present at the launch.
If you’d like to view tomorrow’s historic launch online, visit NASA TV’s live stream at https://youtu.be/21X5lGlDOfg.
Have a good week and we’ll see you on the trail,
Lisa
LMA Newsletter of 5-26-20
