KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.—SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket threaded through the clouds of a stormy Florida sky just before midday on Aug. 1, as the 11th act of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) commercial crew program set off for the International Space Station.
Strapped on top, inside the Dragon Endeavor capsule, were NASA Astronauts Zena Cardman (mission commander) and Mike Fincke (mission pilot, as well as Russian Cosmonaut Oleg Platonov of Roscosmos and Kimiya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), both of whom were named mission specialists.
