SpaceX Crew-8 is the eighth crewed operational NASA Commercial Crew flight and the 13th overall crewed orbital flight of a Crew Dragon spacecraft. The mission launched on 4 March 2024.
The Crew-8 mission transports four crew members to the International Space Station (ISS). Three NASA astronauts, Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, and Jeanette Epps, and one Roscosmos cosmonaut, Alexander Grebenkin, were assigned to the mission. Jeanette Epps was previously assigned to Boeing Starliner missions.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, with the company’s uncrewed Dragon spacecraft on top, lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Loaded with scientific experiments and supplies, the unpiloted SpaceX CRS-27 cargo ship automatically docked to the International Space Station’s forward port of the Harmony module March 16. The SpaceX resupply craft will remain on orbit for a month-long visit.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon Endurance lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at noon EDT on Oct. 5, 2022. Onboard the Dragon spacecraft are NASA astronauts Nicole Aunapu Mann and Josh Cassada, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Koichi Wakata, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina for the mission to the International Space Station.
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission gets underway with the successful liftoff of the company’s Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi. Launch occurred November 15, 2020, at 7:27 p.m. EST from historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Crew-1 is the first regular crew mission of a U.S. commercial spacecraft with astronauts to the International Space Station as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
After the Space Shuttle program was brought to an end in 2011, NASA no longer had a spacecraft system capable of sending humans to space. As a result, it was forced to fly its astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard the Russian Soyuz space vehicle, at a cost of up to US$80 million per astronaut. As an alternative, NASA contracted with private companies such as SpaceX for the Commercial Crew Program, which is expected to cost 50% less than Soyuz once in regular operation. Up to the launch, NASA has awarded a total of US$3.1 billion for the development of the Dragon 2. The Demo-2 mission is expected to be SpaceX’s last major test before NASA certifies it for regular crewed spaceflights. Prior to that, SpaceX had sent twenty cargo missions to the ISS, but never a crewed one.
Crew Dragon Demo-2 (officially Crew Demo-2, SpaceX Demo-2, or Dragon Crew Demo-2) was the first crewed test flight of the Crew Dragon spacecraft. The spacecraft, named Endeavour, launched on 30 May 2020 at 19:22:45 UTC and carried NASA astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken to the International Space Station in the first crewed orbital spaceflight launched from the United States since the final Space Shuttle mission, STS-135, in 2011, and the first ever operated by a commercial provider. Demo-2 was also the first two-person orbital spaceflight launched from the United States since STS-4 in 1982.
Demo-2 was intended to complete the validation of crewed spaceflight operations using SpaceX hardware and to receive human-rating certification for the spacecraft, including astronaut testing of Crew Dragon capabilities on orbit. During their time aboard, Behnken conducted four spacewalks with fellow American astronaut Chris Cassidy to replace batteries brought up by a Japanese cargo vehicle.
Docking and undocking operations were autonomously controlled by the Crew Dragon, but monitored by the flight crew in case manual intervention becomes necessary. The spacecraft soft docked with the International Space Station at 14:16 UTC on 31 May 2020. Following soft capture, 12 hooks were closed to complete a hard capture 11 minutes later. Hurley and Behnken worked alongside the crew of Expedition 63 for 62 days. Endeavour autonomously undocked from the station at 23:35 UTC on 1 August 2020 and returned the astronauts to Earth on 2 August 2020 in the first water landing by astronauts since 1975.
Endeavour will be refurbished and reused for the SpaceX Crew-2 mission, expected to launch in February 2021. Crew Dragon’s next mission, SpaceX Crew-1 — SpaceX’s first operational astronaut flight — is slated to fly with four Expedition 64 astronauts in late September 2020.
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