NASA's "Launch America" drew much of the nation in. On Saturday (May 30), SpaceX launched its first-ever crewed mission, a test flight called Demo-2 that sent NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station (ISS).
The liftoff was the first orbital crewed launch to depart from American soil since NASA retired its space shuttle fleet in 2011.
And a record number of people tuned in to watch the milestone online, agency officials said. "We’re still collecting the data, but some of our metrics are saying that peak viewership for the joint NASA-SpaceX launch broadcast across all of our platforms was at least 10.3 million concurrent viewers — the most-watched event we’ve ever tracked," NASA Associate Administrator