The launching marked SpaceX's 150th Falcon 9 flight.
Astronauts head to the International Space StationOn the heels of the first all-private commercial flight to the International Space Station, four professional astronauts rocketed into orbit early Wednesday, chased down the lab complex and moved in for docking to kick off a four-and-a-half-month stay.
The Crew-4 launch and rendezvous were timed to get the spacecraft to the station well ahead of a spacewalk Thursday by cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev and Denis Matveev. As it is, the SpaceX capsule docked while the station's three cosmonauts were asleep. "This is fourth crew rotation mission," said Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program."It's almost surreal that we're here on this fourth mission, launching four crew in the fourth month of the year on our fourth-flight booster. So it's kind of a 4-4-4 mission for us. It's a huge accomplishment for our team and the industry."
Then, in quick succession, the second stage engine shut down, the first stage successfully landed and the Crew Dragon was released to fly on its own. If all goes well, Lindgren and Hines will monitor an automated 16-hour 22-minute rendezvous with the space station, gliding in for docking at the Harmony module's upper port at 8:15 p.m.
"It was an amazing ride up into low-Earth orbit," Lindgren said."The sensation of the rocket last night was absolutely amazing, an incredibly smooth ride and just incredibly fun to feel that acceleration and then the weightlessness after we got into orbit." Watkins is the 17th African American to fly in space, the fifth woman of color and the first to make a long-duration stay aboard the space station. In a pre-launch interview with CBS News, she called that"an important milestone for the agency and for the country."
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