The day was July 8th, 2011. The Mission was STS-135, the final launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis and the last mission of the shuttle program. I remember walking down to the river in my hometown to catch a glimpse of this historic and bittersweet moment. The Shuttles program had already been in full swing for nine years before I was born. It had already suffered the tragic loss of Shuttle Challenger and her crew. But it had come back, safer and stronger than before. I don’t remember my first shuttle launch; it was just a common part of my life growing up. In my family, we’d turn on the TV to watch the final minutes of the countdown before dashing out the front door and looking east to catch a glimpse of Columbia, Discovery, Atlantis, or Endeavour as they popped out from behind the trees and rocketed into space. Then we’d always wait to hear the sonic booms as the shuttle broke the sound barrier on its way into outer space.
One thing I was never able to see in person was the shuttle on its gliding flight to land at the Kennedy Space Center. But I heard it many a time. Following Columbia’s loss during reentry, it was reassuring to hear the BOOM BOOM that was capable of rattling you from sleep because you knew the shuttle had safely transported her crew and cargo beyond our planet’s atmosphere and brought them home to earth again.
It was sad to see the shuttle program come to an end. Some people have a favorite sports figure or musician. Growing up, I had a favorite shuttle. It was hard to imagine those majestic machines being relegated to museum pieces across the country. Never to see them strapped to an external tank and boosters, never again to see the fire that would burst from the engines as they roared to life, pushing them off the launch pad as they climbed higher and higher, leaving the gravity of earth for the weightlessness of space.
Little did I realize on that July afternoon in 2011, that not only was the shuttle program coming to an end, but it would be nine years before astronauts would lift off from the space coast.
Fast forward to today, and the landscape of space exploration looks quite different. It feels a bit like we have stepped back in time to the early days when Alan Shephard, aboard the Mercury-Redstone rocket, in a spacecraft named Freedom 7 became the first American to travel into space and the first man to manually control his ship in outer space. But while the new machine that will take men to space is not as exciting to me, as the shuttles, I am thrilled that astronauts will once again be lifting off from the Space Coast.
Let’s talk briefly about the launch.
With the Launch of SpaceX Demo-2, we will see several firsts.
- The first launch of Astronauts from the USA in 9 years.
- It will be the first time the Crew Dragon has carried a Crew into space.
- It will be the first time a Commercial company will send a crew into space.
- It will be the first US spaceflight mission not to include the presence of Public at the KSC visitors complex. Everyone will be much further away.
- It will be the first 2-person only crew launched from the USA, since STS-4 in 1982
- It will be the longest time the entire crew from a US spacecraft will stay at the space station. The crew is expected to remain from 1-3 months. On a typical Shuttle mission, they remained for no more than two weeks.
- It will be the first time a crew capsule will splashdown in the Atlantic. (All previous capsule splashdowns have occurred in the Pacific.)
The crew of the Demo-2 mission has been with NASA since 2000 and are both veterans of the Shuttle Program. In fact, the spacecraft commander, Douglas Hurley, was the pilot of shuttle Atlantis on the final mission, STS-135, in 2011. It seems only fitting that one of the crew from that final flight should hold the distinction of being among the first to return to space. Alongside Hurley, is Robert Behnken, the joint operations commander of the flight. This will be the third flight into space for both men. There is not a specific date for their splashdown in the Atlantic. The crew is expected to dock with the ISS and remain there for 1 to 4 months.
The Falcon 9 rocket that will carry Hurley and Behnken into space will lift off from Launch Complex 39A, or as we call it, Pad 39A. This launchpad has been in service, with modification, of course, since the first Saturn V launch carried the unmanned Apollo 4 spacecraft into space in 1967. All of the crewed Apollo missions, beginning with Apollo 8, used Pad 39A. The pad was reconfigured for the shuttle program, and STS-1, the first flight of the Shuttle Program, christened the pad in 1981. It was the sight of the first 24 launches of the shuttle program. 39A would also be the location of the final Shuttle launches, culminating in the launch of Atlantis in 2011. But the history of 39A lives on, as it from here that SpaceX has launched several historic flights and it is from here that Demo-2 will blast off carrying Americans into space from American soil once again.
Let’s watch it together
Live – SpaceX on Wednesday the 27th at 4:33 pm EDT
Backup launch dates Saturday, May 30 at 3:22 p.m. EDT and Sunday, May 31 at 3:00 p.m. EDT.
My vantage point will be available on Youtube on the day following the launch.
Enjoy!
Ant on the Move 