LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Two astronauts successfully launched into space from Cape Canaveral Saturday for the first time since 2011.
They traveled to the International Space Station in a SpaceX rocket.
A lot of preparation went into the launch.
“We’ve been…working on this for over a decade,” said NASA astronaut, Butch Wilmore. “It’s the work of the nation coming together, obviously tens of thousands of people across the nation putting their all into this because so many things have to go right on a space launch.”
This is the first time NASA astronauts have launched into space on a commercially built spacecraft.
Butch Wilmore said getting this rocket launched has taken longer than expected, and they hoped to launch in the mid-2010s.
But flying in space is not easy and so many things have to be perfect for launch.
“You’ve got to human-rate these vehicles with systems that have backup systems that have backups to the backups systems,” Wilmore said.
Wilmore went to the space station in 2014 for six months in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
While he was there, he worked robot arms and did four space walks.
“Actually, I helped set up the systems that these vehicles now are docking to,” Wilmore said.
Saturday’s launch was historic. It’s a step towards future flights, and eventually getting Americans back on the moon.
“You’ve got to start somewhere, and this is what we’re doing here. We’re going to and from low earth orbit, to and from the space station, still doing rendezvous and docking, those things you have to do to go to the moon,” Wilmore said. “So it’s a stepping stone, every flight is a stepping stone.”
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