WIKIARCHIVES.SPACE

Inside the suit-up room in the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA astronaut Douglas Hurley waves after donning his spacesuit ahead of the agency’s SpaceX Demo-2 launch on May 30, 2020. Hurley and crewmate Robert Behnken are the first astronauts to launch to the International Space Station from U.S. soil since the end of the Space Shuttle Program in 2011. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft lifted off at 3:22 p.m. EDT from historic Launch Complex 39A. Part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, Demo-2 is SpaceX’s final flight test, paving the way for the agency to certify the crew transportation system for regular, crewed flights to the orbiting laboratory.