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SpaceX officially certified to ferry astronauts to ISS for NASA

SpaceX has been officially certified by NASA to transport crew aboard the Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon vessels to the International Space Station.

This certification has been years in the making and wasn’t arrived at easily. The landmark moment here, however, was surely the fact that astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley arrived at the ISS and returned to Earth in the NASA SpaceX Demo-mission.

“This certification milestone is an incredible achievement from NASA and SpaceX that highlights the progress we can make working together with commercial industry,” NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement.

And that work begins as soon as this weekend with NASA’s Crew-1 mission targeting a launch on Saturday 14th November from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center.

From here astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, along with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut, Soichi Noguchi will depart on a six month long mission to the International Space Station.

“I could not be more proud of everyone at SpaceX and all of our suppliers who worked incredibly hard to develop, test, and fly the first commercial human spaceflight system in history to be certified by NASA. This is a great honor that inspires confidence in our endeavor to return to the Moon, travel to Mars, and ultimately help humanity become multi-planetary,” chief executive officer at SpaceX, Elon Musk, said in a statement.

This news also means that NASA no longer needs to rely on Russia to get its astronauts to space.

We now wait in anticipation for launch of Crew-1 this weekend.

[Source – NASA][Image – SpaceX/NASA]

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