Successful Launch of Falcon 9 Rocket, Dragon Spacecraft – Endurance

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!

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 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

Falcon 9 Dragon Endurance

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