T+32 days (1 July 2020) — Second spacewalk. [46], An official launch weather forecast for Dragon Crew Demo-2 by the 45th Weather Squadron of the U.S. Space Force, for the original launch time at 20:33:33 UTC on 27 May 2020, predicted a 50% probability of favorable conditions. T+21:59 (17:22) — Behnken and Hurley board the ISS. It gives them a late-night-talk-show kind of chemistry, at turns goofy and sincere.

Private boats coming close to a crew working on the capsule. (Mark Mulligan/AP), Hurley, left, and Behnken depart the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building for Launch Complex 39A during a dress rehearsal on May 23 before the Demo-2 mission launch at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (Bill Ingalls/AP).

Hurley couldn’t help himself from cracking up in laughter. [7][69][70][71][7], Over their time aboard the ISS, Hurley and Behnken spent over 100 hours completing science experiments, while traveling 27 million miles over their 1024 orbits of the Earth. “He’s the trivia master between the two of us.”, “Doug’s worst habits?” Behnken said during a NASA promo video. T+52 days (21 July 2020) — Fourth spacewalk. The couples joke that they often thank the head of the astronaut selection committee “for doing a great job of selecting spouses for us,” McArthur said. Each track is specially chosen, often by the astronauts' families, and usually has a special meaning to an individual member of the crew, or is applicable to their daily activities. We could have gone two directions with that. (Family photo), LEFT: Doug Hurley with his wife, Karen Nyberg, and their son, Jack. Smiling, competent, reliable: in short, "The Right Stuff" of the early days of space flight. In the past, NASA’s astronauts may have been pitted against each other in ruthless competition for flight assignments, preening for the cameras and strutting their ego-fueled “Right Stuff” to orbit and back, always eager to get ahead. The "nest" was then pulled further on board the ship where a 30-minute purge of the service section took place, as there were abnormally high levels of dinitrogen tetroxide detected around the capsule. NASA pegged the overall risk of a loss of mission (LOM) as 1-in-60, covering scenarios where the Crew Dragon does not reach the space station as planned, but the crew safely returns to Earth. Crew Dragon Endeavour landing in the Gulf of Mexico on 2 August 2020. [7][68] Following soft capture, 12 hooks were closed to complete a hard capture at 14:27 UTC. The launch was scrubbed at T−16:53 minutes due to thunderstorms and light rain in the area. (Family photo), Bob Behnken with his wife, Megan McArthur. [52][58] The launch live stream was watched online by 3 million people on NASA feeds,[59] and the SpaceX feed peaked at 4.1 million viewers. The arcs of their careers and personal lives have for years run on parallel tracks, like twin strands of DNA, winding from the military to test pilot school to the same NASA astronaut class, where both met their wives. Behnken, 49, a Missouri native, holds a doctorate in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology.

[56] President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, with their wives, were at Kennedy Space Center in Florida to see the launch attempt on 27 May 2020,[57] and returned for launch on 30 May 2020. Also depicted are the American flag and a graphic representation of the ISS.

Behnken has said his 6-year-old son, Theo, was nervous about him flying, and his astronaut parents have worked to make their extraordinary lives seem regular. Scheduled for Wednesday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, it would be the culmination of a long journey — for NASA, for SpaceX and for a pair of the agency’s most seasoned astronauts, who have marched together in unusual lockstep to get to this point. Asked on NASA’s promo video what they were looking forward to most, Behnken said he expected the crescendo of their mission to end with a bit of seasickness christening once it’s over and they splash down into the ocean. [14], Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken were announced as the primary crew on 3 August 2018. [83] One of four ties was noted to have deep erosion. [6] Hurley and Behnken worked alongside the crew of Expedition 63 for 62 days. As in past space missions, the plush toy was used as an indication of zero gravity for the strapped-in astronauts. Then conceded: “Like, two years longer.”, Finally serious, Behnken traced his career: test pilot school at Edwards Air Force Base, “I got an engineering education,” he said, “and a degree in physics — ”. Here's what they said. [20][21], After the Space Shuttle program was brought to an end in 2011, NASA no longer had a spacecraft system capable of sending humans to space. The heat shield design was changed to include more erosion resistant martials at the ties. On Monday, the Space Force’s weather office at Cape Canaveral predicted a 60 percent chance weather would prevent a launch. Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley, the NASA astronauts set to launch into orbit Saturday on a SpaceX rocket, are former military pilots, veterans of US space shuttle missions, and both married to fellow astronauts. [38] NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said on 9 April 2020 that he was "fairly confident" that astronauts could fly to the ISS aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon spaceship at the end of May or in early June 2020, pending final parachute tests, data reviews and a training schedule that could escape major impacts from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. [14] Prior to that, SpaceX had sent twenty cargo missions to the ISS, but never a crewed one. T+00:02:40 (19:25:25) — Stage separation of the, T+17:54 (13:56, 31 May 2020) — Crew Dragon reaches Waypoint 1 for. [54][55] The first stage booster (serial number B1058) landed autonomously on the floating barge Of Course I Still Love You, which was prepositioned in the Atlantic Ocean. [35][36] SpaceX traced the cause of the anomaly to a component that leaked oxidizer into the high-pressure helium lines, which then solidified and damaged a valve. This mission has multiple official names. [86] In addition, SpaceX noted that the parachutes were deployed lower than expected, but still within the allowable range. “Well, I was born in 1970, and I became an astronaut in 2000, so it took about 30 years,” Behnken deadpanned. “When you’re watching, you’re just a spectator.

[29], The Falcon 9 rocket used to launch Endeavour displayed NASA's "worm" insignia, the first time the logo had been used officially since it was retired in 1992.

[73][76] Later SpaceX and NASA confirmed that their next mission will have a 16 km (10 mi) enforceable keep-out zone patrolled by the U.S. Coast Guard.

In the Air Force, he flew more than 25 different kinds of aircraft, including as a test engineer for the F-22 Raptor. It's a moment they've been training for for the past five years.