After NASA ended its shuttle program in 2011, U.S. astronauts who needed to go to space had to travel to the central Asian country of Kazakhstan to get a ride on a Russian spacecraft. But that changed last May, when two astronauts took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, for the first time in nine years.
Astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley launched in a SpaceX Dragon capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket. The successful launch was the final test of the SpaceX system for crewed missions. It was also the first launch of the Commercial Crew Program (CCP), which is a partnership between NASA and private aerospace companies SpaceX and Boeing.
“I am simply amazed at what the NASA and SpaceX teams have accomplished together,” says Kathy Lueders, NASA’s CCP manager.