Crew Dragon
SpaceX's crew-rated spacecraft, carrying astronauts to the International Space Station under NASA's Commercial Crew Program since 2020. It launches atop a Falcon 9 and returns crews by ocean splashdown.
Key facts
Mission & specifications
Mission
- Operator
- SpaceX
- Launched
- May 30, 2020
- Status
- Active
Trajectory
- Distance from the Sun
- 1.01 AU
- Distance from Earth
- 372,632 km
- Distance from Venus
- 0.646 AU
Mission
Crew Dragon returned human spaceflight to American soil. After the Space Shuttle retired in 2011, the United States spent nearly a decade with no way to launch its own astronauts, buying seats on Russian Soyuz rockets instead. NASA's Commercial Crew Program set out to change that by paying private companies to build crew transport, and on 30 May 2020 SpaceX's Crew Dragon Demo-2 carried Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the International Space Station — the first crewed orbital launch from the United States in nine years, and the first ever flown by a commercial company. The gumdrop-shaped capsule, a crewed version of the Dragon cargo ship, docks itself to the station automatically, seats up to four, and brings its crew home to a parachute splashdown. Its launch-escape system can pull the capsule clear of a failing rocket at any moment from the pad to orbit. Since the first operational flight, Crew-1, in November 2020, Crew Dragon has flown a steady rotation of NASA and international crews to the ISS, and has opened orbit to private customers as well — the all-civilian Inspiration4, the Axiom commercial visits to the station, and the Polaris Dawn flight that staged the first commercial spacewalk. By making crewed launches routine and partly reusable, Crew Dragon helped turn human spaceflight from a purely governmental endeavour into a commercial service.
- 2019Demo-1 uncrewed test flightMilestone
An empty Crew Dragon docks itself to the ISS, rehearsing the full crewed profile.
- 2020Demo-2: crewed return to orbitLaunch
Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley fly the first crewed US launch since the Shuttle, and the first commercial one.
- 2020Crew-1: first operational missionMilestone
A four-person crew begins regular Crew Dragon rotations to the Space Station.
- 2021Inspiration4 all-civilian flightMilestone
The first orbital mission flown entirely by private citizens, with no professional astronauts aboard.
- 2024Polaris Dawn spacewalkSpacewalk / EVA
The first commercial spacewalk is performed from a Crew Dragon in a high orbit.
Images
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