Five, four, three, two, One-Stop. Placing the emotional and upsetting events on the ground – the civil unrest across the country after the death of George Floyd – to one side for a moment, last weekend we placed two Americans into space from the U.S. mainland after a 9-year delay. After blasting off from the Kennedy Space Center and then whizzing around the Earth at speeds that eventually hit 17,500 mph, the SpaceX spacecraft carrying two NASA astronauts docked with the International Space Station, completing the first leg of a historic journey.
The mission marks the first time a private company has flown astronauts to orbit and flight tested a vehicle that could truly take us onto a journey that will boldly go where no one has gone before. NASA Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley sit at the tip of the pyramid of tens of thousands of workers – and, importantly, disrupters and innovators – who have delivered new space vehicles, innovation and technology across years of research and development.