Up, Up, and Into Orbit

Rocket launches never get old, especially when real people are riding atop a tower of fiery rocket fuel. On Thursday morning, NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 mission lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, soaring through clear blue skies on its way to the International Space Station (ISS).

The Falcon 9 rocket carried four space travelers inside a Crew Dragon capsule: NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canadian astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. Together, they represent an international team uniting for science hundreds of miles above Earth.

What Will They Do Up There?

Living in orbit is not just about floating around in microgravity and snapping photos of continents below. The team will spend six months conducting cutting-edge experiments, including:

  • Testing how human bodies adapt to long stays in zero gravity.
  • Growing plants and testing closed-loop life support systems for future Mars journeys.
  • Conducting spacewalks to upgrade the station's solar power grids.

For Kutryk, this marks his very first spaceflight, while veteran astronaut Watkins returns to orbit after previously spending 170 days in space. The journey to the ISS takes less than a day, docking automatically with the football-field-sized laboratory high above our heads.

If you could ask an astronaut one question while they float aboard the space station, what would it be?

Source: NASA