The rocket’s two stages separated 2.5 minutes after launch. About five minutes after that, the first stage returned to Earth at Cape Canaveral, acing the company’s 204th consecutive booster landing. Then, 12 minutes and 15 seconds after liftoff, the Falcon 9’s upper stage deployed the mission’s Crew Dragon<\/a>\u00a0capsule, named Endeavour, into\u00a0low Earth orbit<\/a>\u00a0(LEO).<\/p>\n The astronauts of Crew-8 now on their way to the space station are\u00a0NASA<\/a>‘s\u00a0Matthew Dominick (commander), Michael Barratt (pilot) and\u00a0Jeanette Epps<\/a>\u00a0(mission specialist), as well as mission specialist Alexander Grebenkin of Russia’s space agency\u00a0Roscosmos<\/a>. All crewmembers are new to space aside from Barratt, who is making his third spaceflight.<\/p>\n “Hey, Earth! Just to let you know, it’s kind of like a rollercoaster ride with a bunch of really excited teenagers,” Barratt told mission control just after Endeavour deployed into LEO. “Thanks so much to our friends and colleagues at SpaceX for the awesome ride. It’s great to be back in space again!”<\/p>\n Crew-8 marks SpaceX’s 13th crewed flight overall and its eighth operational one for NASA as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. The company has now sent a total of 50 people to orbit, although astronaut Michael L\u00f3pez-Alegr\u00eda flew twice, as commander of both the\u00a0Ax-1<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Ax-3<\/a>\u00a0private missions, making it 49\u00a0different<\/em>\u00a0people.<\/p>\n Tonight’s launch was the first flight of this particular\u00a0Falcon 9<\/a>\u00a0rocket, making it the sixth time SpaceX has used an unflown rocket in a crewed launch.<\/p>\n On the flip side, the Endeavour capsule is a seasoned veteran. Endeavour famously flew on the first crewed test flight of the Crew Dragon spacecraft\u00a0on May 30, 2020<\/a>, ferrying NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the ISS.<\/p>\n Since then, Endeavour has also flown the\u00a0Crew-2<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Crew-6<\/a>\u00a0missions for NASA and the\u00a0Ax-1 private mission<\/a>\u00a0for Houston-based company Axiom Space in 2022. Crew-8 therefore marks five flights for Endeavour, the most of any Crew Dragon, making it the “fleet leader,” said Steve Stich, manager for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, during a press briefing on Feb. 28 at KSC.<\/p>\n Yet, despite how many times these capsules have flown \u2014 in addition to the increasing cadence at which SpaceX is launching crewed missions to the orbital laboratory \u2014 NASA refuses to let its guard down. During the same Feb. 28 briefing, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson stressed that crew safety is “primary” for the agency. “It’s risky business,” he said.<\/p>\n “Every time we launch, it’s white-knuckle time \u2014 and especially when humans are on top,” Nelson\u00a0added later<\/a>\u00a0during the briefing. “We never want to get in to the frame of mind that it’s so routine that it’s like getting in your car and taking a Sunday afternoon drive.”<\/p>\n That safety culture was on display tonight in the leadup to launch. Shortly after the four astronauts were locked inside Endeavour, mission team members noticed a slight crack in the thermal seal around the capsule’s hatch. After considerable discussion and analysis, NASA and SpaceX determined that the issue is minor and would pose no excess risk to the crew, so they went ahead with the launch.<\/p>\n “We estimated the square acreage of this defect to be about 0.02 square inches [0.13 square centimeters], which is less than half of what we are required to qualify this system to holes or cracks or other defects,” Sarah Walker, director of Dragon mission management at \u00a0SpaceX, said during a press conference held about an hour after launch. “About 0.05 inches [0.32 square cm], I believe, is the qualification limit.”<\/p>\n In addition, the crack will be on the leeward side of Endeavour when it reenters\u00a0Earth’s atmosphere<\/a>\u00a0about six months from now, meaning it won’t be exposed to the most extreme heating that the capsule experiences. And the seal material will likely expand during reentry, eliminating the defect anyway, Stich said during the postlaunch briefing.<\/p>\n Tonight’s liftoff occurred a few days later than expected; it was pushed back several times due to bad weather.<\/p>\n During their six-month stay aboard the ISS, the Crew-8 astronauts will conduct more than 200 scientific experiments and technology demonstrations in\u00a0microgravity<\/a>, including research that will support human exploration into deep space.<\/p>\n NASA is already looking to the future with its current human-related science research endeavors, to a time when people might live aboard\u00a0private space stations<\/a>\u00a0or conduct long-duration missions to the moon and Mars through the agency’s\u00a0Artemis program<\/a>.<\/p>\n Like Crew-8’s science focus, most of the agency’s current human-science research is not only geared toward thriving in LEO, but also toward keeping human crews safe and healthy on exploration missions, Kristin Fabre, deputy chief scientist of NASA’s Human Research Program, told Space.com. “The need to understand all of the changes that are happening during exploration missions, and also understand the changes of the human body over a diverse population, is more critical than ever,” Fabre said.<\/p>\n When the Crew-8 quartet arrives at the space station, they will briefly join\u00a0the four\u00a0international astronauts of Crew-7<\/a>\u00a0before the latter group hands over the torch and gets set for their departure, which will occur no earlier than March 11. Crew-8 will also rendezvous with the three members of Russia’s MS-24 mission, which includes NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara.<\/p>\n SpaceX is one of two commercial companies with multibillion-dollar contracts to fly astronauts to the ISS and back for NASA. The other company,\u00a0Boeing<\/a>, aims to launch the first crewed flight on its\u00a0Starliner spacecraft<\/a>\u00a0no earlier than April 22.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/j9oHuNspVBpbttQVbFqmxF-1200-80.jpg\")