SpaceX will launch two astronauts to International Space Station on May 27, NASA says

Nine years after the last space shuttle flight, NASA plans to launch two U.S. astronauts aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule May 27 for a trip to the International Space Station, the agency announced Friday. Let's #LaunchAmerica 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/RINb3mfRWIBridenstine announced the long-awaited target launch date hours after a Russian Soyuz ferry ship brought two Americans — Jessica Meir and Drew Morgan — home from the space station and just eight days after astronaut Chris Cassidy used the agency's final contracted Soyuz seat to reach the lab complex.He will be the lone American aboard the station until the SpaceX Crew Dragon arrives.If all goes well, veteran shuttle astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken, decked out in futuristic SpaceX pressure suits and driven to the launch pad in a Tesla SUV, will blast off from historic pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center atop a Falcon 9 rocket at 4:32 p.m. EDT on May 27.The slender two-stage booster will climb directly into the plane of the space station's orbit, releasing the capsule to fly on its own about 10 minutes after liftoff.From there, Behnken and Hurley, pilot of the final shuttle mission in July 2011, will monitor a mostly autonomous rendezvous, catching up with their quarry the day after launch. "But we're doing everything we can to minimize that eventuality."The coronavirus is a major complication in an already complicated set of interlocking initiatives aimed at insuring the uninterrupted presence of U.S. astronauts aboard the International Space Station.As a hedge against possible downstream problems or delays in the agency's commercial crew program, NASA is negotiating with Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, for a seat aboard the October Soyuz flight and another next spring.But if the Crew Dragon test flight goes well, NASA is expected to launch a second Crew Dragon later this year carrying a crew of four: Mike Hopkins, Shannon Walker, Victor Glover and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi.