President Donald Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Second Lady Karen Pence, along with Kennedy Space Center Director Bob Cabana, left, Marillyn Hewson, Chief Executive Officer, Lockheed Martin, Mike Hawes, VP of Human Space Exploration and Orion Program Manager at Lockheed Martin Space, and NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, right, are seen by the Artemis I capsule during a tour of the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building following the departure of NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley for Launch Complex 39A to board a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft for launch, Wednesday, May 27, 2020, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 mission is the first launch with astronauts of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. The test flight serves as an end-to-end demonstration of SpaceX’s crew transportation system. Today’s launch of Behnken and Hurley was scrubbed due to weather and is now scheduled for 3:22 p.m. EDT on Saturday, May 30, from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. A new era of human spaceflight is set to begin as American astronauts once again launch on an American rocket from American soil to low-Earth orbit for the first time since the conclusion of the Space Shuttle Program in 2011.
Photo credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls