{"id":11704,"date":"2021-04-30T22:13:56","date_gmt":"2021-04-30T14:13:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/astronauts-describe-thrilling-ride-to-orbit-on-falcon-9-rocket\/"},"modified":"2021-04-30T22:13:56","modified_gmt":"2021-04-30T14:13:56","slug":"astronauts-describe-thrilling-ride-to-orbit-on-falcon-9-rocket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/astronauts-describe-thrilling-ride-to-orbit-on-falcon-9-rocket\/","title":{"rendered":"Astronauts describe thrilling ride to orbit on Falcon 9 rocket"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>STORY WRITTEN FOR&nbsp;CBS NEWS&nbsp;&amp; USED WITH PERMISSION<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"678\" height=\"381\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/B1sl_1Jro8k\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>When the countdown hit zero last Friday and the engines powering a previously flown Falcon 9 first stage roared to life for takeoff, the four astronauts strapped into a SpaceX Crew Dragon some 21 stories up started laughing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo we\u2019re sitting on the launch pad, obviously, and when the engines lit, we all started laughing because it just felt so awesome and powerful,\u201d Shane Kimbrough, commander of the Crew-2 ferry flight to the International Space Station, said in an interview Thursday with CBS News. \u201cShortly after that, we started accelerating, heading uphill.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a great ride, very smooth,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t remember any surprises, except we were just all very happy. We were all pretty excited to be on orbit again and feel that incredible acceleration.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Kimbrough, co-pilot Megan McArthur, European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet and Japanese flier Akihiko Hoshide blasted off from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center last Friday morning and docked at the space station the next day.<\/p>\n<p>Their arrival boosted the lab\u2019s crew from seven to 11, but only until this weekend when the four astronauts they are replacing board their own Crew Dragon capsule and return to Earth to close out a 166-day mission.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s great to be back on station, it\u2019s great to be floating around again,\u201d said Kimbrough, veteran of a space shuttle flight in 2008 and launch aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft for a 173-day stay aboard the station in 2016-17. \u201cAll of us are really enjoying that, relearning how to fly. So that\u2019s been fun.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRight now we have 11 on board, and it\u2019s been really a lot of fun learning from the folks that have been on board for a while and learning all the new things. It hasn\u2019t changed a whole lot since I was here last time. \u2026 It\u2019s been really fun, though, we\u2019re excited for Crew-1 to head back home here pretty soon whenever the weather allows.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>McArthur spent 13 days in space in 2009 to help repair the Hubble Space Telescope, \u201cand this is my first time to the space station. First impression, of course, is that the living space is much, much bigger. You really have to be precise with your flying as so as not to crash into all the other people that are up here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo I\u2019m learning how to fly,\u201d she said. \u201cIt feels really good. And it\u2019s just an amazing, amazing place.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Known for favoring lively footwear, McArthur did a zero-gravity flip toward the end of the interview, showing off her socks. Printed on the bottom of her right sock: \u201cIF YOU CAN READ THIS\u201d and on her left: \u201cBRING ME SOME COOKIES.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Kimbrough, McArthur, Pesquet and Hoshide are the third crew to launch aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon. Kimbrough, one of the few astronauts who has now launched aboard three different spacecraft, said the climb to space atop a Falcon 9 was thrilling.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe first stage was, I would say, fairly smooth,\u201d Kimbrough said. \u201cThere was a little bit of rumbling going on, but pretty smooth.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>About two-and-a-half minutes into the flight, the nine Merlin first stage engines shut down, the stage fell away and the single vacuum-rated Merlin powering the second stage ignited, giving the crew \u201ca nice kick in the pants.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo we got to experience that M-vac engine lighting, and then kind of a little thrust back in our seats and then pure acceleration for the next six-and-a-half minutes or so,\u201d Kimbrough said. \u201cIt was a bit rumbly, it kind of was like \u2026 being on a rocky road in a vehicle.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The crew was pushed back in their seats with about four-and-a-half times the normal force of gravity compared to the 3 \u201cGs\u201d Kimbrough and McArthur experienced during their shuttle launches.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt just kind of felt like this rumble for about six-and-a-half minutes as we increased our speed and got up into space,\u201d he said. \u201cPretty spectacular.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The crew was in the process of winding down after a busy first day in space when flight controllers told them to get back in their spacesuits because of a predicted close encounter with a piece of space debris. It turned out to be a false alarm, but it highlighted a growing concern in the space community.<\/p>\n<p>Wednesday night, SpaceX launched another batch of 60 Starlink internet satellites, pushing the total launched to date to 1,505. OneWeb also is launching a constellation of broadband satellites and other companies, including Amazon, have plans for their own \u201cmega constellations.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With more and more satellites populating low-Earth orbit, some analysts are concerned about an increased probability of collisions that would generate threatening space debris.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s definitely something that we need to keep a careful eye on and keep aware of where all these things are, and the best ways to track them and how to get the information to the people that need it,\u201d McArthur said. \u201cIt was quite an event for us.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe were kind of winding down for the evening and getting ready to go to bed, rolled out our sleeping bags and gotten into our sleepwear when we got the notification that we needed to get in our (space)suits,\u201d she said. \u201cWe got there just in time, just in time for them to call us out that it had been a false alarm.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The crew responded per their training \u201cand we felt like the team handled it really well,\u201d she added. \u201cBut it\u2019s definitely something that as a spacefaring nation \u2026 we\u2019re going to need to keep each other apprised of what\u2019s out there and how to avoid it as the space gets more and more crowded.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>SpaceX plans to follow the Crew-2 mission with launch of four civilian, non-astronaut fliers this fall, a flight purchased by billionaire entrepreneur and jet pilot Jared Isaacman to benefit St. Jude Children\u2019s Research Hospital in Memphis.<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cInspiration4\u201d crew will not visit the space station. Their Crew Dragon will simply orbit Earth for a few days, providing spectacular views from a higher altitude than the station. Asked if she had any reservations about commercial spaceflight and non-professional astronauts, McArthur said she welcomes their participation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOf course, part of our mission as astronauts is to try to inspire people, inspire the next generation of explorers,\u201d she said. But \u201cwe\u2019re engineers, so maybe we\u2019re not always great with words.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese people are going to experience some of the same things that we\u2019re experiencing, and they\u2019re going to be able to share it in a different way, maybe, than we normally do. I think it\u2019s gonna be really exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>STORY WRITTEN FOR&nbsp;CBS NEWS&nbsp;&amp; USED WITH PERMISSION When the countdown hit zero last Friday and the engines powering a previously flown Falcon 9 first stage roared to life for takeoff, the four astronauts strapped into a SpaceX Crew Dragon some 21 stories up started laughing. \u201cSo we\u2019re sitting on the launch pad, obviously, and when [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[524,291,235,850,1718,1719,479,1545],"class_list":["post-11704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-commercial-crew","tag-commercial-space","tag-crew-dragon","tag-crew-dragon-endeavour","tag-crew-2","tag-expedition-65","tag-falcon-9","tag-human-spaceflight"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11704"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11704\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}