SpaceX rocket lifts off to space station
- 12 years ago
(ROUGH CUT ONLY - NO REPORTER NARRATION)
An unmanned rocket owned by privately held Space Exploration Technologies blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Tuesday (May 22) for a mission designed to be the first commercial flight to the International Space Station.
The 178-foot (54-meter) tall Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 3:44 a.m. (0744 GMT) from a refurbished launch pad just south of where NASA launched its now-retired space shuttles.
The U.S. space agency is counting on companies like Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, to take over flying cargo - and eventually astronauts - to the 100 billion US dollar space station, which orbits about 240 miles (390 km) above Earth.
Currently, NASA is dependent on Russia to fly crew to the station, at a cost of more than 60 million US dollars per person.
If its test flight is successful, SpaceX would become the first private company to reach the space station, a microgravity research complex for biological, materials, fluid physics and other science experiments and technology demonstrations.
An unmanned rocket owned by privately held Space Exploration Technologies blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Tuesday (May 22) for a mission designed to be the first commercial flight to the International Space Station.
The 178-foot (54-meter) tall Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 3:44 a.m. (0744 GMT) from a refurbished launch pad just south of where NASA launched its now-retired space shuttles.
The U.S. space agency is counting on companies like Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, to take over flying cargo - and eventually astronauts - to the 100 billion US dollar space station, which orbits about 240 miles (390 km) above Earth.
Currently, NASA is dependent on Russia to fly crew to the station, at a cost of more than 60 million US dollars per person.
If its test flight is successful, SpaceX would become the first private company to reach the space station, a microgravity research complex for biological, materials, fluid physics and other science experiments and technology demonstrations.