The Crew Dragon capsule sits atop a Falcon 9 rocket at Kennedy Space Center, ready for the DM-2 mission (SpaceX photo) CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - When the Apollo 11 crew blasted off from Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center nearly 51 years ago, their launch ended the race for the moon.
And when astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley launch from the same pad next week, they’ll be ending another space race.
No astronauts have flown to orbit from American soil since the retirement of the space shuttle fleet in 2011. Instead, NASA has been buying rides aboard Russia’s Soyuz capsules, which launch from Kazakhstan.