Vice President Mike Pence was expected at Nasa’s Kennedy Space Centre for the long-awaited start of regular crew rotations aboard privately owned and operated capsules. “Game day!” tweeted Nasa astronaut Mike Hopkins, the crew commander. “Astronaut launch today!” Mr Musk tweeted on Sunday morning, adding he had symptoms last week of a minor cold but currently felt “pretty normal”. The launch of three Americans and one Japanese — all but one of them former space station residents — comes just three months after a pair of Nasa test pilots successfully concluded SpaceX’s first occupied flight of a Dragon crew capsule. Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi will become only the third person to rocket into orbit aboard three different kinds of spacecraft.

Source: Irish Independent November 15, 2020 18:37 UTC