While no people were on board, the flight represents a significant step for NASA
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — The United States space program took a significant step toward returning human spaceflight to American soil after a SpaceX rocket successfully blasted off from a historic launch pad here early Saturday.
Since the Space Shuttle was retired in 2011, NASA has been unable to fly people to space and has been forced to rely on Russia to ferry its astronauts to the space station, the orbiting laboratory about 250 miles above the Earth. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket blasted off at 2:49 a.m. Saturday from pad 39A here, the same launch pad that hoisted Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon and many of the space shuttle missions as well.
Now NASA said it is on the verge of recapturing some of the national pride that has been a hallmark of its human spaceflight program since the beginning of the Space Age. Saturday’s flight “is the next critical step in putting people on Dragon,” he said. “I can’t begin to explain to you how exciting it is for a test pilot to be on a first flight of a vehicle. And we’ll be ready when SpaceX and NASA are ready for us to fly it.”
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