In Early March This Year, Spacex Successfully Sent Its Crew Dragon Craft to the Iss and Returned It Safely to Earth. What Does This Historic Mission Mean for Space Travel?
What is the Crew Dragon?
The Crew Dragon is SpaceX’s first human-rated vehicle. Its design is based on the Dragon cargo module which SpaceX uses to run supplies to the International Space Station (ISS). In March, it went through its first flight tests in orbit, a step closer to NASA approving it for human flights. When in operation, the Crew Dragon – along with rival Boeing’s Starliner – will act as taxis, carrying astronauts to and from orbit. They were developed as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Development programme, which aims to provide a way to launch humans into space from US soil. Since the end of the Space Shuttle in 2011, NASA has relied on Russian Soyuz capsules to reach the ISS. As well as the political ramifications of the US being solely dependent on Russia, using a single transportation system is unreliable. This was highlighted in late 2018, when a series of issues led to all Soyuz spacecraft being grounded for several months. The issues were quickly solved, but the incident almost ended up with the ISS being abandoned for the first time since 2000.
What could go wrong?
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