NASA’s Crew-1 mission

  • As part of NASA’s first commercial human spacecraft system in history, a crew of four astronauts has been sent to the International Space Station (ISS).
  • The crew is onboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft called Resilience.
  • Crew-1 is the first operational flight of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft on a Falcon 9 rocket to the ISS.
  • It is also the first of the three such flights scheduled over the course of 2020-21.
  • The flight lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on November 14.
  • In May, NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 test flight had lifted off for the ISS.
  • It had become the first crewed flight to launch from American soil since the conclusion of the space shuttle era in 2011.
SIGNIFICANCE 
  • Crew-1 is the first of six crewed missions that NASA and SpaceX will operate as part of the Commercial Crew Program.
  • The Crew-1 team will join members of Expedition 64 and conduct microgravity studies.
  • The objective of the commercial crew program is to make access to space easier in terms of its cost, so that cargo and crew can be easily transported to and from the ISS, enabling greater scientific research. 
  • The program is a way to reduce the cost of going to space for agencies such as NASA and also makes it possible for any individual to buy a ticket on a commercial rocket.
  • The Crew Dragon spacecraft is capable of staying in orbit for a period of 210 days.
  • It will return in spring 2021, making it the longest human space mission launched from the US. 
ISS
  • The International Space Station (ISS) is a modular space station (habitable artificial satellite) in low Earth orbit. 
  • It is a multinational collaborative project between five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA (Japan), ESA (Europe), and CSA (Canada).
  • The first ISS component was launched in 1998.


SOURCE: IE

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