, after years of proving the capability on station supply runs. The rocket was used last November on the company’s second astronaut flight.Embracing the trend, spacecraft commander Shane Kimbrough and his crew weeks ago wrote their initials in the rocket’s soot, hoping to start a tradition.
Thomas Pesquet, Megan McArthur, Shane Kimbrough and Akihiko Hoshide, inside the capsule at at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Fla., April 23, 2021.A masked Musk met briefly with the astronauts at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center before they boarded white gull-winged Teslas from his electric car company. The astronauts’ spouses and children huddled around the cars for one last “love you” before the caravan pulled away and headed to the pad in the predawn darkness.
For Friday’s automated flight, SpaceX replaced some valves and thermal shielding, and installed new parachutes on the capsule, named Endeavour after NASA’s retired space shuttle. Otherwise, the spacecraft is the same vehicle that flew before. SpaceX picked up the station slack for NASA after the space agency’s shuttles retired in 2011, starting with supply runs the following year. The big draw was last year’s return of astronaut launches to Florida. “It’s awesome to have this regular cadence again,” said Kennedy’s director Robert Cabana, a former shuttle commander.
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