Both NASA and SpaceX are prepping the Crew-1 Mission to send the first operational crew to the International Space Station today. At the time of writing this, the clock was at a half an hour before launch. Everything seems to be in the green thus far and you can follow along in the following live feed where you will be able to watch the full launch.
The launch is taking place from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, set to launch at 7:27 p.m. EST. The crew including Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker, and Soichi Noguchi (JAXA astronaut), will be working a 6-month tour on the ISS.
They will be landing the first stage on the droneship in the Atlantic ocean.
As mentioned, this is the first operational mission, meaning the crew being sent contains a full accompaniment of four astronauts that will be making themselves comfortable as the operating crew of the ISS while up there. This follows up their original successful attempt to send two test astronauts as a test in their first manned mission through SpaceX (Demo-2 Mission), which includes their successful return to Earth in August.
This makes for a big moment and win for the US, finally launching an operational crew to the ISS from American soil in many years.
