After flying four astronauts into orbit, SpaceX makes its 101st straight landing

Enlarge / The Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Crew-6 mission streaks into orbit on Thursday morning. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann)

A Falcon 9 rocket blasted into the starry sky above Florida early on Thursday morning, sending four astronauts safely on their way into low-Earth orbit.

This mission, flown by SpaceX for NASA, will deliver the astronauts to the International Space Station after a 24.5-hour flight to synch up with the orbiting laboratory. During this time, under nominal operations, Dragon will fly entirely autonomously.

SpaceX is conducting its sixth operational human spaceflight for NASA, and accordingly this mission is named Crew-6. The Falcon 9 rocket's first stage, shiny and clean on the launch pad, was actually flying its very first mission, but the Dragon spacecraft is making its fourth overall flight, the most times that any Crew Dragon vehicle has flown into space. Previously this Dragon, named Endeavour, flew NASA's Demo-2 and Crew-2 missions, as well as Axiom Space’s Ax-1 private spaceflight to and from the International Space Station.

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