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:

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) probe
Test 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 spacecraft
Connecting 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 mission
Space 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

Crew-5-liftoff-for-postlaunch-1024x683.jpg

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

Falcon 9 Dragon Endurance







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