WIKIARCHIVES.SPACE

NASA’s Commercial Crew Program Manager, Kathy Lueders, participates in a postlaunch news conference inside the Press Site auditorium at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 30, 2020, following the launch of NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 mission to the International Space Station. Liftoff of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft, carrying NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley, occurred at 3:22 p.m. EDT from historic Launch Complex 39A. Behnken and Hurley are the first astronauts to launch to the space station from U.S. soil since the end of the Space Shuttle Program in 2011. 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