How the DM-2 Launch Represents Both a Return to Form for NASA and a Glimpse of Space Exploration in the 21st Century
By Josh Ingersoll, 2019 Matthew Isakowitz Fellow
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the company's Crew Dragon spacecraft onboard on the launch pad for the upcoming Demo-2 mission at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. May 21, 2020. Photo: NASA/Bill Ingalls
Since NASA’s space shuttle program took its leave in the summer of 2011, America has been left without the capability to crew the International Space Station itself. Forced to purchase seats aboard the Soyuz from the Russian Federation in order to make use of the most expensive piece of hardware in human history—the ISS—the pressure to develop a replacement has been at a fever pitch. At the time of writing, it has been 8 years, 10 months, and 17 days since an American astronaut has been launched from American soil on an American rocket. In addition to this, it has been over 39 years since a new American crewed launch vehicle took its maiden flight. Most of all, after 321 crewed government orbital launches worldwide, no commercial entity has ever put an astronaut in orbit. Because of three of these reasons and more, saying that SpaceX’s DM-2 mission planned for this Wednesday is one of the most important events in American human spaceflight would be the understatement of this very tumultuous year.
NASA astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken, wearing SpaceX spacesuits, at a dress rehearsal prior to the Demo-2 mission launch. May 23, 2020. Photo: NASA/Bill Ingalls
On Wednesday, May 27th at 4:33PM EDT (weather permitting) astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley will become the first humans to leave Cape Canaveral atop a rocket in nearly nine years. The pair will join John Glenn (Mercury mission), Gus Grissom (Gemini), John Young (Gemini/Shuttle), Wally Schirra (Apollo), Donn Eisele (Apollo), Walter Cunningham (Apollo), and Robert Crippen (Shuttle) as the only American astronauts to pilot a spacecraft on its maiden orbital flight. This achievement will mark the first returns of NASA’s tight-budgeted, oft-delayed Commercial Crew Program with Elon Musk’s SpaceX providing the first commercial ride to LEO (low-Earth orbit) ever. The revival of NASA’s crewed launch capability will end the current chapter in their human spaceflight history that has been marred with sudden large programmatic changes, funding cuts, and overall developmental stagnation. With LEO back within NASA’s reach, their desire to move to the Moon and onto Mars has become much more credible.
While the upcoming launch will be a stressful but joyous moment for NASA, it will also represent the reaffirmation of SpaceX’s concrete claim to being the premiere commercial spaceflight company both in the US and worldwide. Being founded just 18 years ago in 2002, SpaceX has quickly become the place for rapid space hardware development. Their development cadence of novel engines, launch vehicles, satellites and crewed spacecraft has rivaled Apollo-era NASA and they have not shown any signs of slowing down. With the addition of becoming the first commercial company to launch astronauts into orbit as another notch on their belt, SpaceX will extend their lead over other commercial launch entities. SpaceX has been the arbiter of change in the space industry during the 21st century, and with large future projects on horizon such as their Starlink global communications network and Starship super heavy-lift vehicle, they are positioned to flourish in the coming years.
Space shuttle Atlantis in July 2011, marking the final flight of the Space Shuttle Program. Photo: NASA/Bill Ingalls
There is one more group that will be greatly affected by Wednesday’s launch, the American public. In NASA’s 62-year history, no other events have garnered such a place in the zeitgeist of American culture as crewed launches from Cape Canaveral. From the highs of Apollo 11 to the lows of the Challenger Disaster, these moments in astronautical history have inspired generations of rocket scientists, engineers and explorers and ignite feelings of patriotism in the public like no other. Wednesday’s launch may be the memory that inspires the future first human to step foot on Mars to take AP physics next year, or the future first astronomer that images an exoplanet to finally buy that telescope they’ve always wanted. Crewed launches are a modern marvel and represent the best of what America can do as a nation and, after almost 9 long years, astronauts will have US engineers and scientists to thank for their trip to orbit.
For me personally, DM-2 is important as it will be the first live-crewed launch that I view. When the shuttle retired in 2011, I had just completed my freshman year of high school and was beginning to think about what I wanted to do with my life. I wrote a paper a few months earlier on the imminent launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (well, that didn’t age well...) and thought that space was cool and all, but was still weighing my options for college and beyond. A ton has changed in my life in the past 9 years; I’ve gone from an aimless teenager to a certified space-geek who is rearing to help push our industry forward. I’ve had the opportunity to meet some of my biggest idols in the industry (Elon Musk and Buzz Aldrin) through wonderful programs like the Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship Program, and had the opportunity to put hardware in space through the TECHEDSAT-8 program at NASA Ames Research Center. I even got to view both the first Starlink and nighttime Falcon Heavy launches last summer. Through the past 9 years there has been one event that I haven’t been able to take part in yet, and that is the anxious thrill of knowing that the payload atop the rocket I’m viewing is not just cutting-edge technology, but two or more of my fellow humans and space-geeks hurtling through the sky. Wednesday’s DM-2 launch will be one for the books—breaking records and inspiring the next generation all while reminding us of our past and giving us a glimpse of what is to come. Ad Astra!
Josh Ingersoll, now and then! Left: Josh and his now-fiancée Jacquie Carson in Winter 2020. Right: Photo taken 7/8/2011 on the last day the shuttle launched.