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!

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.

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:
Major NASA Missions – 2021 – 2023 |
||||
Launch Date | Mission | Vehicle | Launch Site | Total Launch Cost |
---|---|---|---|---|
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:
NASA Mission Programs – 1958 to Present |
|||||
Program |
Start Date |
First Crewed Flight |
End Date |
No. of crewed missions launched |
Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
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 |
Table Information Courtesy NASA.gov

Photo courtesy of NASA.gov | Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett
Falcon 9 Dragon Endurance
Wow! That’s an amazing photo!!