Crew Dragon’s Safe Return, Opens Door To Commercial Spaceflight

Credit: SpaceX

On Sunday, SpaceX achieved another milestone in its pursuit of spaceflight dominance. Crew Dragon, the company’s autonomous space pod, a vehicle designed to transport astronauts to and from the ISS, splashed down safely in the Gulf of Mexico.

This Demo-2 mission was the final hurdle that the company overcome to receive NASA’s certification for operational crew missions to and from the International Space Station. Crew Dragon astronauts spent a a total of 63-days aboard the space station before returning to earth.

What made the mission extra special is the fact that the spacecraft is mostly autonomous, where the computer pilots the craft and handles most of the heavy lighting. It docked and undocked autonomously too, and returned both astronauts, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley back to earth safely.

This is part of SpaceX’s larger plans of bringing commercial human spaceflight to the masses. Its eventual goal it allow space travelers to orbit earth as well as travel to the moon. Though it may seem far fetched, the Dragon spacecraft seats 7 and carry environmentally sensitive cargo in its pressurized capsule.

These lofty goals are coming to realization with the success of the Demo-2 mission. Once the SpaceX and NASA teams have completed their analysis of data for certification, NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Mike Hopkins, Shannon Walker, and JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi will fly on Dragon’s first six-month operational mission in late September.