SpaceX launches 4 astronauts for NASA after private flight

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SpaceX launches another historic astronaut mission

New York (CNN Business)A SpaceX rocket and spacecraft took off Wednesday morning carrying four astronauts destined for the International Space Station, including the first Black woman to join the ISS crew. Takeoff occurred at 3:52 am ET. The astronauts, riding aboard their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, will spend the day free flying through orbit before docking with the ISS around 8 pm ET.

This mission, called Crew-4, marks a return to the crewed launches that SpaceX conducts in partnership with NASA after the company concluded the first all-private mission to the space station for wealthy paying customers on Monday. On board are NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Robert Hines, and Jessica Watkins, and Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, who is flying on behalf of the European Space Agency.

What makes this flight historic?

Jessica Watkins will become the first Black woman to complete such a mission. Though more than a dozen Black Americans — including four Black women — have traveled to space since Guion Bluford became the first to do so in 1983, no Black woman has had the opportunity to live and work in space for an extended period, as the ISS has enabled more than 200 astronauts to do since 2000. "This is certainly an important milestone I think both for our [space] agency and for the country," Watkins said during a press conference last month.

"I think it really is just a tribute to the legacy of the black women astronauts that have come before me as well as to the exciting future ahead." She has a long history with NASA, having begun her career there as an intern, and she previously held roles at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, and at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, where she worked with the Curiosity Mars rover. A trained geologist, she's studied the surface of the red planet. atkins' crew mates refer to her by the nickname "Watty."

https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/27/tech/spacex-launch-crew-4-wednesday-scn/index.html

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