New York (CNN Business) NASA and its international partners named four astronauts to crew a SpaceX mission to the International Space Station in spring 2021 — beefing up staffing on board the orbiting laboratory. Putting four astronauts on SpaceX's spring 2021 mission, dubbed Crew-2, will bring the number of people staffing the ISS to seven, allowing "NASA to effectively double the amount of science that can be conducted in space," the agency said Tuesday. It marked the first time in history that a commercial vehicle carried humans into orbit and the first crewed launch from US soil since NASA's Space Shuttle retired in 2011. Behnken and Hurley are expected to return home from the ISS as soon as this weekend, and their safe return could grant the Crew Dragon vehicle official certification as a human-worthy spacecraft. And that will pave the way for a Crew Dragon capsule to be launched on its first fully operational mission to the space station, Crew-1, which is slated for late SeptemberRead More

Source: CNN July 28, 2020 22:18 UTC