U.S. astronaut crew on SpaceX's Crew Dragon to cast ballots from space
Send a link to a friend
[October 03, 2020]
By Joey Roulette
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Three NASA
astronauts launching next month on SpaceX's first operational Crew
Dragon mission plan to vote in the upcoming presidential election from
the International Space Station, the crew said Tuesday as they named the
spacecraft "Resilience."
SpaceX's Crew Dragon Resilience capsule will carry NASA astronauts
Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and Japanese astronaut
Soichi Noguchi to the space station Oct. 31 as the company's first
non-test mission after completing a successful two-man preliminary
mission last summer.
"All of us are planning on voting from space," Walker told a news
conference, explaining that the three U.S. astronauts will fill out an
electronic PDF file aboard the station some 250 miles above Earth and
email it to elections officials.
The crew's more than six month mission in space, enabled by SpaceX's new
gumdrop-shaped Crew Dragon space capsule, comes as NASA regains its
capability of sending astronauts to space after nearly a decade-long
dependence on Russia's Soyuz vehicles.
Following tradition from SpaceX's last crewed mission named "Endeavor,"
which ended in August with a successful splashdown in the Gulf of
Mexico, Hopkins said the crew chose the name "Resilience" as a tribute
to a "challenging" 2020.
[to top of second column]
|
"I think all of us can agree that 2020 has certainly been a
challenging year," Hopkins said, adding that SpaceX and NASA have
pressed on with launch plans despite a slew of events like the
"global pandemic, economic hardships, civil unrest, isolation" that
have punctuated this year.
SpaceX made a few tweaks to Crew Dragon's heat shield and altitude
sensors after analyzing data from the summer test flight carrying
NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, the company's Crew
Dragon chief Benji Reed said during a separate press conference on
Tuesday.
(Reporting by Joey Roulette in Washington; Editing by Eric M.
Johnson and David Gregorio)
[© 2020 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2020 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content. |