Elon Musk’s SpaceX is launching astronauts for Nasa
Tags: Space X Falcon 9 Rocket, Elon Musk

It’s almost 20 years to the tragic accident of space shuttle Columbia. To understand the background to the Crew Dragon missions, we need to go back almost 20 years to a tragic accident.

On 1 February 2003, the space shuttle Columbia destroyed while returning the Earth’s atmosphere. All seven astronauts in the Shuttle were died in the disaster.

This incident trigger for a dramatic shift in direction for America’s human spaceflight programme.

On 14 January 2004, President George W Bush said that the space shuttle would be retired after finishing of the International Space Station (ISS). In its place, America would build a new shuttle capable of carrying astronauts to the Moon.

In 2005, Nasa chief Mike Griffin said that this ISS would, for the first time, open up commercial transport opportunities for the routine transportation of cargo astronauts and cargo to low-Earth orbit.

This, Griffin reasoned, was led to free up enough funds to complete a Moon return. Nasa established a Commercial Crew & Cargo Program Office (C3PO) to manage the program.

At this time, Space X initiated by South African-born entrepreneur Elon Musk. Musk focused about bringing down the assembling cost of spaceflight by re-using space hardware and settling humans on Mars.

Jessica Jensen, director of Starship mission hardware and operation at Space said Space X was implemented to make life multi-planetery.

But, she adds: “We were a very small company for several years. So we had to look for opportunities – how do you go from being a small company to actually putting people into orbit. When Nasa came out with the need to fly cargo to and from the International Space Station, we jumped on that.”

SpaceX was selected for evaluation under the Nasa cargo programme in 2006. But by 2008, SpaceX and Tesla had invested for car manufacturing.

Fortunately, on 23 December 2008, Nasa invited SpaceX with a $1.6bn contract to ferry cargo and supplies to the ISS. Describing this offer, Musk said: “I couldn’t even maintain my composure, I was like: ‘I love you guys’.”

The company’s Dragon 1 capsule carry only cargoes and supplies. Nevertheless, it’s a big achievement for the company.

Barack Obama had been elected president in November, 2008. His administration suspended to review of the human spaceflight programme, which led to the cancellation of his predecessor’s plan to return to the Moon (known as Constellation).

However, his administration helped the continued commercialisation of space, backing the development of private crew vehicles. But it would take time and, after the space shuttle was retired, Nasa had to paid Russia tens of millions of dollars per seat to fly its astronauts to the ISS on the Soyuz vehicle, which launches from Baikonur in Kazakhstan.

Congress was initially didn’t interest about the Commercial Crew Program and did not offer sufficient funds at first. But Charles Bolden, the former astronaut who took over from Griffin as Nasa chief under Obama, persisted and eventually provided the assistant he needed.

From their initial $50m investment in the programme in 2010, the space agency whittled several other companies down to two – SpaceX and Boeing – in 2014.

Since then, they have been developing and testing their spacecraft designs.

In March 2019, SpaceX performed a triumphant release of the Crew Dragon without astronauts. Using automated procedures, the capsule approached and docked with the space station successfully.

Despite this achievement, and others along the way, it hasn’t always been plain sailing for SpaceX. In 2016, a Falcon 9 rocket blew up on the launch pad. And in April 2019, a Crew Dragon capsule exploded while static fire test on the ground. Luckily no one was hurt in either event.

The spacecraft was also having issues with the parachute system designed to bring it back safely to land.

These mishaps, along with earlier funding shortfalls for the Commercial Crew Program, had caused delays to an original timeline that would have seen SpaceX launch crew to the ISS in October 2016.

The SpaceX founder was referring to Nasa’s Space Launch System rocket – planed to launch humans to the Moon – which has also been hit by delays and short of enough funds.

Musk’s company wasn’t alone in facing obstacles, however. A timing anomaly prevented Boeing’s spacecraft – the CST-100 Starliner – from docking with the space station in an uncrewed test flight last year.

In January 2020, Crew Dragons managed a successful in-flight test of launch abort system which helped for the historic first lift-off with astronauts from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on 30 May.

Nasa’s Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley spent two months aboard the ISS before coming back to Earth safely in the capsule.

“If you would have told me then (eight months prior, when he sent the tweet) that we would be right here today, I don’t know that I would have believed it,” said Bridenstine in post-launch press conference.

“Since that day, Elon Musk and SpaceX have delivered on everything Nasa has asked them to deliver on – and at a speed that we never would have guessed.”

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