The American astronauts who launched from Earth to the International Space Station (ISS) for the first time aboard a SpaceX spacecraft landed safely back to Earth three years ago on Aug. 2.
What Happened: The Demo-2 mission, was the first launch of NASA astronauts to space from the U.S. since 2011 when the space shuttle retired and marked SpaceX’s first manned mission.
NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley lifted off to the International Space Station at 3:22 p.m. EDT aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft on May 30, 2020. The Falcon 9 launch occurred from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
"This is a dream come true for me and everyone at SpaceX,” CEO Elon Musk said about the mission during the launch.
The Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico 64 days later on Aug. 2, completing the mission.
SpaceX has completed 250 successful missions in total as of today including several manned missions to the ISS.
Yet Another Space Landmark: Interestingly, on Aug. 2 in 1971, Apollo 15 Commander David Scott conducted the famous experiment wherein he dropped a geologic hammer and a feather on the Moon.
The renowned experiment confirmed astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei‘s conclusions from hundreds of years before that objects dropped from the same height and hit the surface at the same time irrespective of their weight in the absence of air resistance.
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