SpaceX Ready for Defining Moment With First Humans on Rocket

If the weather holds and there are no technical issues, a SpaceX Dragon capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket will blast off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 4:33 p.m. on May 27. Two NASA astronauts — Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley — will be on board, with a docking at the International Space Station scheduled for 19 hours later.

The history of spaceflight is made up of moments etched into humanity’s collective memory, including Yuri Gagarin’s orbit of the Earth in 1961, Neil Armstrong’s “one small step” onto the moon in 1969 and the loss of Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986. While SpaceX’s upcoming launch may not end up ranking with those events, it will mark the first-ever ride to orbit on a privately owned vehicle — and the first time astronauts have flown from U.S. soil since the shuttle program ended in 2011.

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