Successful Launch of Falcon 9 Rocket, Dragon Spacecraft – Endurance

October 5, 2022April 7, 2023

We continue to celebrate flight into space! Earlier today, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, with the company’s Dragon spacecraft – named Endurance – atop, lifted off from Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39A at noon EDT. Crew members are now a few hours into their 29-hour trip to the International Space Station for a science expedition mission. “It was an outstanding launch,” said Joel Montalbano, manager of the International Space Station Program at Johnson. “Just a fantastic day to be in human spaceflight.” Crew-5 marks the first spaceflight for Mann, Cassada, and Kikina, and the fifth for Wakata. This is the sixth SpaceX flight with NASA astronauts – including the Demo-2 test flight in 2020 to the space station – as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. Mann has become the first Native American woman in space. After docking, Crew-5 crewmates will be welcomed inside the station by the seven-member crew of Expedition 68. The astronauts of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 mission will undock from the space station and splash down off the coast of Florida later this month. How nice that we are blessed to be in the USA!

Crew-5 liftoff from NASA's Kennedy Space Center

Photo courtesy of NASA.gov | Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft, named Endurance, lift off from Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Oct. 5, 2022, for the Crew-5 mission to the International Space Station.

NASA's SpaceX Crew-5 crew members wave at Kennedy Space Center

Photo courtesy of NASA.gov | Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 crew members wave outside of Kennedy Space Center’s Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building on Oct. 5, 2022. From left are: Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina, NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann, and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Koichi Wakata.

Today’s Mission Summary:

NASA SpaceX Crew-5 Summary – 10/05/22
Launch	October 5, 2022
Rocket	SpaceX Crew-5 Falcon 9 rocket
Spacecraft	Dragon spacecraft
Expedition	#67

Table Information Courtesy NASA.gov

Individual Missions:

Launch Date	Mission	Vehicle	Launch Site	Total Launch Cost
Major NASA Missions – 2021 – 2023
2021
02/18/2021	LANDING on Mars: Mars 2020	N/A	N/A	N/A
12/25/2021	MIRI One of four instruments on the James Webb Space Telescope, the id-Infrared Instrument, or MIRI, studies planets, stars, and galaxies in infrared light	Ariane 5 rocket	Arianespace’s ELA-3 launch complex Europe’s Spaceport located near Kourou, French Guiana	$10B
2022
09/26/2022	D.A.R.T. Double Asteroid Rendezvous Test (DART) probeTest to explode a meteorite in outer space to collect data	N/A	N/A	$324.5M
10/05/2022	Endurance SpaceX Crew-5 Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraftConnecting to International Space Station	Falcon 9 Dragon	Launch Pad 39A Kennedy Space Center in Florida	$4.1B
11/12/2022 to 11/27/2022	DUE: Between Period Artemis I Un-crewed Moon orbiting missionSpace Launch System (SLS) rocket and the complete Orion spacecraft	SLS Orion	Launch Pad 39B Kennedy Space Center in Florida	$50B
2023
July 2023 to Year of ’24	DUE: Between Period Psyche The Psyche mission is a journey to a unique metal-rich asteroid orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter	Psyche	SpaceX Hawthorne, CA	$850M

Table Information Courtesy NASA.gov

Hopefully the next year will prosper once again. We are all waiting for the next launch! Meantime, I will show a list of the major space programs flights from past days:

Mission Programs 1958 to Present:

Program	Start Date	First Crewed Flight	End Date	No. of crewed missions launched	Notes
NASA Mission Programs – 1958 to Present
Mercury	1958	1961	1963	6	First U.S. Crew on a Mission
Gemini	1961	1965	1966	10	Practice Space Rendezvous/EVA’s
Apollo	1960	1968	1972	11	First Humans to Land on the Moon
Skylab	1964	1973	1974	3	First American Space Station
Apollo–Soyuz	1971	1975	1975	1	Joint Test Project with Soviet Union
Space Shuttle program	1972	1981	2011	135	First Missions Where spacecraft was Reused
Shuttle-Mir program	1993	1995	1998	11	Russian partnership
International Space Station	1993	1998	Ongoing	63	Joint with Roscosmos, CSA, ESA, and JAXA; Americans flew on Russian Soyuz after 2011 retirement of Space Shuttle
Commercial Crew Program	2011	2020	Ongoing	3	Current program to shuttle Americans to the ISS
Artemis program	2017	Ongoing	Ongoing	0	Current program to bring humans to the Moon again