SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft arrives in Florida ahead of first astronaut flight

Crew Dragon will launch from Kennedy Space Center

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – The first SpaceX spacecraft to carry humans arrived at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Friday ahead of its historic flight later this year.

NASA Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will be on the first ever crewed flight of a Crew Dragon atop a Falcon 9 rocket launching from Launchpad 39A at KSC.

[RELATED: Video shows what NASA astronauts will experience during SpaceX’s Crew Dragon launch]

The launch, expected in the first half of 2020, will mark the first time humans have launched from U.S. soil since 2011.

On Friday, NASA initially declared SpaceX the unofficial winner calling the Crew Dragon the first to fly humans ahead of NASA’s other commercial crew partner, Boeing.

NASA later deleted that tweet and updated its news release to remove that phrase.

Boeing and NASA continue to investigate the December mishap from Boeing Starliner’s maiden voyage into space. The uncrewed spacecraft was headed to the space station but a computer error caused the ship to miss an orbital insertion burn that would have sent it to rendezvous with the ISS.

Starliner was forced to land in New Mexico about 48 hours after launching from Cape Canaveral.


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