On Friday, NASA gave the green light to the launch of two astronauts aboard a SpaceX vessel next week — the first crewed space flight from US soil in nine years and a crucial step towards ending American reliance on Russian rockets. Since Thursday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, top officials at the US Space Agency and Elon Musk’s company had met for final checks of the Crew Dragon space capsule ahead of their maiden May 27 crewed mission.
The US astronauts, Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley are scheduled to launch off the International Space Station on Thursday from Launch Pad 39A at 4:33 pm EST, arriving the next day.
American astronauts have been flying on Russian rockets to the ISS since the US space shuttle program was shelved after three decades of service in 2011.
If the SpaceX mission succeeds, the US will have achieved its objective of no longer having to buy seats on Russian Soyuz rockets to send astronauts to the ISS.
The Panthera Post 