NASA released a video of its astronauts who entered the International Space Station in SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft on Sunday evening after a near-24 hour journey.
Taking to Twitter, NASA wrote, "This is the first time in human history @NASA_Astronauts have entered the @Space_Station from a commercially-made spacecraft. @AstroBehnken and @Astro_Doug have finally arrived to the orbiting laboratory in @SpaceX's Dragon Endeavour spacecraft."
In the video, the astronauts were seen hugging each other which seems impossible on Earth these days due to the novel coronavirus pandemic wreaking havoc.
A Twitter user wrote, "Brilliant. No social distancing in space?" "Wow, no coronavirus in space. No social distancing, not masks, no testing. See how they are hugging freely; the best place to be now," said another Twitter user.
Here are some of the Twitter reactions:
On Monday, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) congratulated NASA and SpaceX for their manned mission and termed it as "historic." "Congratulations to #NASA and #SpaceX for historic first launch of manned mission after 2011. Great job !" ISRO tweeted.
Earlier, the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, carrying NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley had lifted off at 3:22 pm EDT Saturday atop the company's Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
The crew is believed to perform tests on Crew Dragon in addition to conducting research and other tasks with the space station crew. The Demo-2 mission is the final major test before NASA's Commercial Crew Program certifies Crew Dragon for operational, long-duration missions to the space station.
