The Planetary Society Celebrates Successful Crew Dragon Launch

CEO Bill Nye: “Our future in space looks even brighter today.”

Press Statement
May 30, 2020

Contact
Danielle Gunn
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +1-626-793-5100

Pasadena, CA (May 30, 2020) — The Planetary Society, the world’s largest independent space interest organization, issued the following statements celebrating today’s successful launch of the Crew Dragon:

“Congratulations to NASA and SpaceX on today’s exhilarating launch! We’re thrilled to witness this new era of human spaceflight.

NASA’s commercial crew program, and the experiment with public-private partnerships, is the result of smart policy decisions made by the agency and White House leadership a decade ago. It succeeded due to the hard work and ingenuity of the teams at SpaceX and NASA, and the bravery of the astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley who rode its first crewed mission into space.

NASA and SpaceX have opened a new avenue to send humans to low-Earth orbit and we look forward to their safe return. We hope today’s launch excites people everywhere about the remarkable era of space exploration ahead of us.”

Bill Nye, CEO of The Planetary Society, added:

“SpaceX made history today and joined an exclusive club—one previously occupied solely by national space agencies. A US-built Falcon 9 rocket, launched from the historic Kennedy Space Center, took two astronauts to the International Space Station. The mission is a product of the public-private partnership: a private company rocket, launched from and to government-built facilities. Our future in space looks even brighter today.”

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About The Planetary Society

With a global community of more than 2 million space enthusiasts, The Planetary Society is the world’s largest and most influential space advocacy organization. Founded in 1980 by Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray, and Louis Friedman and today led by CEO Bill Nye, we empower the public to take a meaningful role in advancing space exploration through advocacy, education outreach, scientific innovation, and global collaboration. Together with our members and supporters, we’re on a mission to explore worlds, find life off Earth, and protect our planet from dangerous asteroids. To learn more, visit www.planetary.org.

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