As Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken splashed down into the Gulf of Mexico, book-ending the first crewed launch from American soil in almost a decade, the astronauts who would follow them were watching from NASA's Houston control center in awe.
America's Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker and Japan's Soichi Noguchi had already been selected to succeed Hurley and Behnken's historic flight, the beginning of a new era of routine crewed commercial launches from the United States after the space shuttle program ended in 2011.
