NASA, SpaceX to move ahead with historic first flight despite coronavirus

NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine told reporters Friday that the Astronauts’ first launch to the International Space Station on board a SpaceX spacecraft, an event for May 27th, is “a priority” for the space agency.

It’s a statement you’d expect from NASA’s chief, but it was particularly important in the first year three agency Friday press conferences, because of the environment in which Bridenstine spoke. The administrator attended the conference call from his home in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and not from NASA headquarters the coronavirus pandemic That has a lot of Americans working from home.

Much of everyday life across America is currently closed due to COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. But both SpaceX and NASA say they aim to send people into orbit from American soil for the first time since the space shuttle program ended in 2011.

For the mission called Demo-2, NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken from Kennedy Space Center, Florida will jump into a Crew Dragon capsule on a Falcon 9 rocket. The couple will fly to the ISS, where they will join the crew for a while before riding the kite back to Earth to complete the demonstration mission.

Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s chief operations officer, said the company has been training and working with Hurley and Behnken for years. She described the duo as “badass, but also fathers and husbands”.

Shotwell said there is still some work to be done in the next four weeks, including a final parachute test scheduled for later on Friday and that she is looking forward to the launch day.

“I will feel a little relief when they are in orbit … I will sleep again when they are safe on the planet again.”

According to Bridenstine, Demo-2 is an important step into a near future in which NASA and others will significantly increase the human footprint in space. He imagines several commercial space stations in orbit and a permanent presence on the moon.

“The moon is the testing ground for the target, and of course the target is Mars.”

He said NASA was working with SpaceX on their next generation spacecraft, which CEO Elon Musk hopes will one day bring people to Mars.

But first, NASA has to launch astronauts on a brand new spacecraft for the first time since 1981.

Bridenstine said the event should be a spectacular celebration, but due to the pandemic, he asked people to watch from home instead of coming to Florida to try to personally follow the launch.

“I ask people not to travel to the Kennedy Space Center,” he said. “It makes me sad to say it at all.”

NASA is hosting two more press events on Friday, with program managers from the agency and SpaceX going into more detail about the mission. The latest press event, scheduled for 11:00 a.m., allows reporters to ask questions to Behnken and Hurley. You can watch everything from the CNET live feed above.