Get ready to lift off with the Summer of Space – The National

Get ready to lift off with the Summer of Space – The National

After nine years America will rocket back into orbit while the UAE is also heading to Mars. The climax will be in July, when a small fleet of craft from other nations will head off to Mars, including the UAE's Hope mission.. Nasa, the US space agency, is preparing to send two of its astronauts to the International Space Station in its first manned flight since the end of the Space Shuttle programme in 2011.. The intrepid duo will blast off from Launchpad 39a, a location heavy with space history including the first Apollo missions to the Moon and the later Space Shuttle programme.. This time their craft is a SpaceX Crew Dragon, a commercial partnership with the US space agency and the private company founded by Elon Musk in 2002.. The company has already been supplying the ISS with unmanned capsules since 2012, including the 2017 mission that carried the Genes in Space experiment devised by Dubai teenage Alia Al Mansoori.. Musk has his eye set on privately funded missions to the Moon and eventually Mars, but this month's low Earth orbit flight still marks the start of a new era in space travel.. But the Summer of Space