Space history was made on May 30 when two American astronauts (Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley) were carried into space by a commercial spacecraft. This was the Crew Dragon space capsule, launched on a Falcon 9 rocket, the entire system being the product of the SpaceX company, founded by South African-born engineer and entrepreneur Elon Musk. After reaching orbit, the Crew Dragon successfully docked with the International Space Station (ISS). The spacecraft was launched from Launch Complex 39A at the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (Nasa’s) Kennedy Space Centre (KSC) at Cape Canaveral in the US state of Florida. This was the first time since the retirement of the last Nasa Space Shuttle in 2011 that American astronauts had been launched into space by an American rocket from American soil.
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