ORLANDO, Fla. — When the SpaceX Dragon Endurance took flight atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday, it marked the fifth flight to carry humans aboard the commercially built spacecraft.
It also transported among its four passengers the 600th human to make it into space. Three of the four Crew-3 astronauts are space rookies.
Based on his mission assignment from NASA, European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer takes the 600th spot. The flight also took Kayla Barron, the 601st person to space, in that she was the last of the four assigned to the crew in May. No. 599 is mission commander Raja Chari while Dr. Thomas Marshburn punched his first spaceflight ticket in 2009 on STS-127 aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour and then again on a Soyuz flight in 2012. This is his third flight.
