From left, NASA astronauts Shannon Walker, Victor Gover and Michael Hopkins, along with Soichi Noguchi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), board a plane from Ellington Field near the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, en route to Kennedy Space Center in Florida for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission to begin final launch preparations. Crew-1 is the first operational mission of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.

From left, NASA astronauts Shannon Walker, Victor Gover and Michael Hopkins, along with Soichi Noguchi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), board a plane from Ellington Field near the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, en route to Kennedy Space Center in Florida for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission to begin final launch preparations. Crew-1 is the first operational mission of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.

Soichi Noguchi (shown) of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), along with NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker, board a plane from Ellington Field near the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, en route to Kennedy Space Center in Florida for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission to begin final launch preparations. Crew-1 is the first operational mission of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.

From left, NASA astronaut Shannon Walker, Soichi Noguchi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and NASA astronauts Victor Gover and Michael Hopkins, board a plane from Ellington Field near the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, en route to Kennedy Space Center in Florida for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission to begin final launch preparations. Crew-1 is the first operational mission of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.