In January, the company nailed an in-flight abort test where they jettisoned the crew vehicle from its falcon rocket mid-flight.

(Boeing, with whom SpaceX shares a Commercial Crew Contract, has had an even tougher go at it.)īut last May, an uncrewed Crew Dragon vehicle successfully docked with the ISS and returned to Earth. The company lost two Falcon 9 rockets and a Crew Dragon capsule which exploded during a 2019 ground test. There were explosions, failed parachutes, ballooned costs, and significant delays. SpaceX had initially planned to send a crew into orbit in 2017.

Isaac Watson/NASAīut as anything related to spaceflight, there were challenges and setbacks.

The Demo-1 Crew Dragon capsule is pulled from the Atlantic Ocean in May, 2019, after completing an uncrewed mission to the ISS. 'We've obviously been pleased by financial support, their technical support, wisdom and knowledge in helping us get to this day,' Shotwell said, referring to the upcoming May 27 launch. Just this month, the agency award SpaceX, alongside the aerospace company Dynetics and Jeff Bezos’ spaceflight company Blue Origin, a contract to build a Human Landing System for the upcoming Artemis mission. Over the years, NASA has continued to place its faith in the company. The company has developed and launched numerous reusable Falcon 9 rockets and has ambitions to ferry humans to the moon and Mars. Since then, SpaceX's Dragon vehicle has docked with the International Space Station 21 times, ferrying everything from experiments that grow sections of the human gut on a microchip to barley that could eventually be used to brew beer in microgravity. (Orbital Sciences, which develops the Cygnus spacecraft, also received a contract.) NASA first took a chance on SpaceX in 2006 when the agency-desperate to find a new way to ferry crew and cargo to the ISS-awarded the up-and-coming aerospace company with a Commercial Orbital Transportation Services contract. space agency and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which was founded back in 2002. This launch is the culmination of a long partnership between the U.S.

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