CONTRIBUTING WRITER: Zachary Eichholz, Sustainability Program Manager, City of Cape Canaveral
The City of Cape Canaveral has been witness to history time and time again as daring astronauts take flight aboard some of the greatest machines humankind has ever built. First it was the mighty Saturn V that brought humans to the surface of the moon in the late 1960s. Then it was the Space Shuttle, NASA’s three decade workhorse that helped put the Hubble Space Telescope in orbit and build the International Space Station (ISS). Now, in 2020, there is a new marvel to behold.
On Saturday, May 30 at 3:22 p.m. for the first time ever astronauts were sent into orbit aboard a private spacecraft – the shining and sleek Crew Dragon – which is owned and operated by the Hawthorne, California-based company SpaceX. After a roughly 19-hour journey former shuttle astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnke successfully docked with the ISS, where they will remain until at least August of this year. This mission, called the Demo-2 Mission, is the last test mission to help verify that the spacecraft is fit for service in order to continually take astronauts to the ISS. It was the first time in almost nine years that astronauts launched from Cape after the grounding of the shuttle program in 2011.
Boeing is also actively developing and testing their own human-rated spacecraft called the CST-100 Starliner for future use by NASA and other commercial customers. Numerous other launch providers and rockets from both the private and public sectors will soon join these two spacecraft, increasing the launch cadence from our shores to as many as 50 launches per year by 2022. Other upcoming new rockets include NASA’s own Space Launch System rocket or SLS, Blue Origin’s New Glenn, United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan and Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser.
With NASA’s renewed goal of landing a man and the first woman on the moon by 2024 through the Artemis Program, the launching of the Perseverance Mars Rover, the establishment of the U.S. Space Force, and the exploration goals of countless other space bound companies, Cape Canaveral is set to become the gateway of humanity’s exploration and colonization of the solar system and beyond.
