Today marks a historic day for SpaceX as it successfully completed the launch of the first U.S. private passenger spacecraft, called the Crew Dragon, atop the company's popular Falcon 9 rocket.
Right now the Crew Dragon is making its way to and from the International Space Station and is scheduled to dock autonomously tomorrow. You can watch it live on SpaceX's website at around 3 am EST.
It will then remain docked for another five days, after which it will make its way back to Earth. Initially, SpaceX planned to use propulsive landing just like the Falcon 9 rockets, but it seems like they will be splash landing in the Atlantic instead. From there the ground crew will recover the spacecraft.
Until now, NASA had to rely on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft to get astronauts to and from the ISS but now, it will have an option to choose SpaceX and Boeing for their future trips.
The Crew Dragon Spacecraft
The Crew Dragon is the successor to the Dragon cargo spacecraft that the company uses to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. As the name suggests, it will be used to carry astronauts to the International Space Station, as part of NASA's Commercial Crew Development program.
Crew Dragon is capable of carrying up to seven astronauts at once and its interiors are very much like what you would see in a sci-fi movie. Unlike the cramped spacecrafts that we usually get to see, Crew Dragon is very spacious and has only three touchscreens that will help the astronauts control the flight.
They wouldn't have to do much controlling though as the Crew Dragon is an autonomous spacecraft and most of the backup controlling can be done from the space centre on the ground.
Today's demo mission didn't include real human astronauts but a dummy called Ripley, which contains several sensors that will provide SpaceX with essential data on what the astronauts will experience on their flight on Crew Dragon and how they can make it better and safer.
Up next will be the Demonstration Mission 2 which will be the first crewed test flight of the Crew Dragon scheduled for launch in July 2019. That will be a biggie!