ISRO congratulates NASA, SpaceX for the historic space mission

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Monday congratulated the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and SpaceX for their historic manned mission.

“Congratulations to #NASA and #SpaceX for historic first launch of manned mission after 2011. Great job !” ISRO tweeted from their official account.

The Indian space agency was referring to NASA and SpaceX’s combined manned space mission to NASA’s International Space Station aboard the Elon Musk’ led company’s Crew Dragon.

NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley made history on Saturday in a landmark mission aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon. The space mission in a first was embarked upon using a privately-owned space vehicle. This opens up multiple avenues for public-private partnerships in space explorations and commercial space travel.

They also became the first group of astronauts to usee touch screens to manoeuvre the vehicle unlike the previous Mercury and Apollo missions by NASA. The space vehicle operates autonomously. However, wherever manual manoeuvre is required, the astronauts had three touch panels to operate the vehicle instead of traditional controls and switches.

The Crew Dragon delivered the two astronauts to NASA’s International Space Station on Sunday with an equally smooth docking in yet another first.

The docking happened a mere 19 hours after a SpaceX Falcon 9 was launched from the Kennedy Space Center on Saturday.The mission was the first mission in nearly a decade where astronauts were launched from American soil.

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