WIKIARCHIVES.SPACE

The American flag flies at half-staff next to the countdown clock at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Press Site, Friday, May 22, 2020, in Florida. President Donald Trump directed on Thursday that flags be lowered to half-staff until sunset on May 24th “as a mark of solemn respect for the victims of the coronavirus pandemic.” NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 mission is the first launch with astronauts of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. The test flight serves as an end-to-end demonstration of SpaceX’s crew transportation system. Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley are scheduled to launch at 4:33 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, May 27, from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. A new era of human spaceflight is set to begin as American astronauts once again launch on an American rocket from American soil to low-Earth orbit for the first time since the conclusion of the Space Shuttle Program in 2011.