SpaceX successfully completes historic launch to the International Space Station

The new American SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket took off on Saturday afternoon despite somewhat uncertain weather from Cape Canaveral, Florida. On board the Dragon capsule, the two astronauts, Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, were the first to be sent into space from American soil. "Let's light this candle!" " Said Hurley at the time of firing, echoing the words of the first American astronaut Alan Shepard in the Mercury mission in 1961. The capsule has come as planned Earth orbit. It is expected to take 19 hours to reach the international space station SSI, where the astronauts will stay for four months.

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The rocket is also the first to have been developed by a private firm, opening a new era in the history of space exploration. Human space flights have so far only been launched by governments.

The Falcon-9 rocket and the Dragon capsule are built by billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX company. The two astronauts have also joined the launch pad aboard a Tesla vehicle. Their black and white spacesuits were also developed by SpaceX, which paid particular attention to their retro-futuristic design.

The United States can do extraordinary things even in difficult times.

The stormy weather was ultimately considered acceptable by officials at the Kennedy Center. The launch, originally scheduled for last Wednesday, had to be postponed 17 minutes before takeoff due to the danger posed by lightning. "Falcon / Dragon is designed to withstand multiple lightning strikes, but we don't think it's necessary to take the risk," Elon Musk said on his Twitter account. Weather conditions must also allow the recovery of astronauts at sea in the event of an accident, and must therefore be relatively mild throughout the North Atlantic. Hurley and Behnken, two experienced astronauts, have seen in the past several flights on the space shuttle postponed due to weather conditions or technical problems.

"Maybe America can take a moment to pause and roll over to see for a moment what hope may look like in the future, and remember that the United States can do extraordinary things even in difficult times , " said Jim Bridenstine, Director of NASA.

Donald Trump, who had traveled to Florida last Wednesday to attend the launch, was again present at Cape Kennedy.

President Donald Trump and his vice president Mike Pence, May 30 at the launch of the SpaceX rocket in Florida. MANDEL NGAN / AFP

Around the launch site, spectators had also made the trip to attend the launch, despite the measures taken by NASA to limit the number of spectators, due to the epidemic of Covid-19.

Since the decommissioning of the space shuttle, NASA was forced to send its astronauts into space in Russian rockets, aboard Soyuz capsules designed more than fifty years ago. The American space agency had launched a tender for the construction of a new launcher to send astronauts to the space station. In 2014, it signed contracts worth a total of $ 7 billion with SpaceX and Boeing, the two companies selected. While SpaceX's Dragon capsule had successfully completed all of the test flights, Boeing's Starliner had found itself in a bad orbit and had almost been destroyed due to a series of computer program errors.

We not only want it to be as safe and reliable as we can expect from the most modern spacecraft in the world ... we also want it to be beautiful and spectacular.

Despite its retro-futuristic look, released from 2001 the Space Odyssey, the Falcon capsule is the most modern there is. Touch screens have replaced the buttons and switches of the Apollo capsules or even of the space shuttle. SpaceX, whose objective is to develop commercial space flights, and to send private passengers into low orbit, took particular care in the design of the Dragon capsule. "We not only want it to be as safe and reliable as we can expect from the most modern spacecraft in the world ... we also want it to be beautiful and spectacular," said project manager Benji Reed. .

Dragon was also designed to match its launch vehicle, Falcon 9.

The two astronauts, Bob and Doug, also participated in the design of the capsule and suggested adjustments and improvements. Fully automated, the Dragon capsule has four seats, only two of which were occupied for this test flight. Before takeoff, the two astronauts revealed the name of the capsule, which was kept secret until the last moment.

NASA returns to this historic flight with previous manned space missions: the Mercury project, which had seen the first American astronauts in orbit, a few years after Gagarin's Soviet flight, followed by Gemini, before the series of Apollo flights, which had took a dozen men to the moon between 1969 and 1972.

Nasa director Jim Bridentine praised Elon Musk's vision and inspiration. Despite the cultural differences between the US federal space agency and the Californian firm, he added, the project was successfully completed. "He made a commitment to me and kept his commitment," said Bridentine. "And he did it every time."

The Dragon capsule and the Falcon rocket are only considered as an introduction to the matter by the company SpaceX, which plans to develop a rocket and a spacecraft capable of reaching the planet Mars. But on Friday, a prototype of this device, dubbed Starship , had exploded during a thruster test in its Texas factory. NASA also signed a contract with SpaceX to use Starship to send men back to the Moon.

SpaceX Falcon 9 took off in the same historic launch pad as that used by the Atlantis shuttle in July 2011, the last manned flight launched from American soil. It was from there that the last Apollo capsule was launched, using a Saturn V rocket, for the Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975, the last American capsule to take astronauts into orbit.