Crew-1 Mission Launch Streak

Leaving planet Earth for a moment, a SpaceX_Falcon_9 rocket arced into the early evening sky last Sunday at 7:27 pm EST from Kennedy_Space_Center’s Launch_Complex_39A.

This 3 minute 20 second exposure traces the launch streak as seen over watery reflections from Port_Canaveral, about 15 miles south of the launch. The rocket carried four astronauts en route to the International_Space_Station on the first flight of a NASA-certified commercial human spacecraft system.

Dubbed Resilience, the astronauts’ Crew_Dragon spacecraft successfully docked with the orbital outpost one day later, on Monday, November 16. At the conclusion of their six-month stay on the ISS, the Crew-1 astronauts will use their spacecraft to return to Earth.

Of course about 9 minutes after launch the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage returned to Earth, landing in the Atlantic Ocean on autonomous spaceport drone ship Just Read The Instructions.