SpaceX’s Crew Dragon successfully launched on Saturday, May 30 at 15:22 from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The historic launch pad has previously hosted Apollo and space shuttle missions. Demo-2 was the first crewed orbital spaceflight launched from the United States since the final Space Shuttle mission, STS-135, in 2011, and also the first crewed orbital flight ever operated by a commercial provider. For the past 9 years American astronauts have been relying on the Russian Soyuz to get into space and visit the International Space Station. The mission launched spacecraft commander Douglas Hurley and joint-operations commander Robert Behnken to the International Space Station (ISS). The spacecraft soft-docked with the ISS on 31 May 2020 at 10:16 a.m. EDT (14:16 UTC), slightly earlier than the scheduled time of 10:29 a.m. EDT (14:29 UTC). NASA estimated roughly 10 million people watched the launch on various online platforms and approximately 150,000 people gathered on Florida’s space coast in addition to an unknown number watching on television. The Crew Dragon capsule used in the launch was named Endeavour after the Space Shuttle Endeavour.
