Meet the Two — the Crew of DM-2

by Catherine Ragin Williams | 2020-05-21

On May 27, two explorers will embark on a mission to prove out SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, its commercial craft solution that will once more allow astronauts an entry to the cosmos by way of American soil. As with all test flights, Demonstration Mission-2 (DM-2) will be a nail-biter from start to finish. Before the slated 3:33 p.m. CDT launch (don’t miss the action on NASA TV!), get to know the two men who will break the more-than-nine-year dry spell of Americans launching into space from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

In March 2020, at a SpaceX processing facility on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, SpaceX successfully completed a fully integrated test of critical crew flight hardware ahead of Crew Dragon’s second demonstration mission to the International Space Station for NASA's Commercial Crew Program; the first flight test with astronauts onboard the spacecraft. Behnken and Hurley participated in the test, which included flight suit leak checks, spacecraft sound verification, display panel and cargo bin inspections, seat hardware rotations, and more. Credits: NASA

NASA Astronaut Robert L. Behnken

Native of Missouri
Selected by NASA in 2000
Veteran of two space shuttle flights (STS-123, March 2008; and STS-130, February 2010)
Logged 708 hours in space
37 hours spacewalking (six spacewalks)

What he expects out of Launch Day: “I think there’s a kind of spaceflight idea that there’s romance and surprise, and you’re running through the mission and you’re doing it by the seat of your pants. And I think there was a time in flight tests that that was true, and we trusted people with good instincts and threw them into those situations, and they weren’t necessarily as prepared as they could have been. I think we really do focus on trying to make spaceflight — and a lot of these situations, particularly for a test mission — to go off as expected, to really focus on: What do I expect to hear at this point? The best analogy that I’ve been able to share with people, is that older movie 'Groundhog Day,' where Bill Murray is walking through his day, and he’s done that day so many times that he knows when to catch the boy falling out of the tree and when not to step in the puddle, because those things have all happened before. Our intent is to go through this mission and not find surprises, because we’ve prepared ourselves.”

NASA Astronaut Douglas G. Hurley

Native of New York State
Fighter pilot/test pilot in U.S. Marine Corps (before NASA)
Selected by NASA in 2000
Veteran of two shuttle spaceflights (STS-127, July 2009; and STS-135, July 2011)
Logged over 5,500 hours in more than 25 aircraft

Why he believes partnerships are essential to blazing a trail forward: “This is the first time we’ve done this, in a sense. Where we’ve worked, hand in hand, with a private company and given them the lion’s share of responsibility for producing the vehicle and then going to fly it. And I think it’s going to be a shared effort and a shared collaboration to get us to the Moon and, especially, to Mars, successfully. This is the first part of it. And hopefully, the lessons learned from this program — good and bad — will be brought forward for Artemis and, basically, the ultimate goal of going to Mars.”

Hear straight from the crew members on their thoughts leading up to the historic launch during a virtual Q&A session on May 22 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

For DM-2, Hurley and Behnken worked closely with SpaceX to develop the company’s new spacecraft systems, which will provide roundtrip crew transportation services to the International Space Station and, along with Boeing’s Starliner, return the ability to launch humans into space from U.S. soil.

NASA astronaut Robert L. Behnken. Credits: NASA

NASA astronaut Douglas G. Hurley. Credits: NASA