At 2:49 am EST today SpaceX launched the first of their Crewed Dragon spacecraft on a mission to the International Space Station.
As this was the first launch of the spacecraft there were no crew members onboard however the vehicle is heavily instrumented and does carry a dummy called Ripley which will allow SpaceX and NASA to monitor the loads experienced during all phases of the launch.
Dragon will now travel to the ISS for a docking tomorrow morning at approximately 6 am. Another feature of this vehicle is the ability to automatically dock with the International Docking Adapter which was launched by a Cargo Dragon in 2016.
This flight known as DM-1 is the first flight in the NASA Commercial Crew contract.
This marks another important first for SpaceX as with the cargo Dragon they are now the first private company to launch a crew rated capsule to orbit.
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