How Elon Musk's company SpaceX became NASA's go-to for crewed missions

In a historic milestone for the United States, the liftoff of first full-fledged taxi flight for NASA by a private firm that is Elon Musk’s SpaceX that launched four astronauts to the International Space Station was successful. With spectators nearby, the SpaceX Falcon rocket blasted off at night from the Kennedy Space Center with three Americans and one Japanese, which is also the second crew to be launched by the company but marking the first of regular station crew flight. The company named the Dragon capsule on top, Resilience in the wake of challenges posed by this year and especially COVID-19 pandemic, and it reached the orbits nine minutes after detaching from the rocket.

How SpaceX became a goto company for NASA?

NASA resorted to private companies to haul cargo and crew to the International Space Station (ISS) after the shuttle fleet retired in 2011 and SpaceX qualified for both. While the first NASA-SpaceX launch marked Kennedy Space Station back in the astronaut-launching action, it has given NASA an opportunity to avoid buying seats worth $90 million each on Russian Soyuz rockets. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine stressed on the magnificent launch that “this is a six-month mission and it’s the first of many.”

SpaceX has officially become a reliable private firm for NASA to resume its space shuttle programme mostly because of its first successful launch and return of SpaceX astronauts earlier this year. This is momentous for Elon Musk’s company but it has budded from the tragic incident of February 1, 2003, when the space shuttle Columbia was extensively damaged while entering the Earth and caused the death of all seven astronauts aboard. It was this launch nearly two decades early that led to the US administration of President George W Bush to announce decommissioning of the space shuttle after the completion of ISS in 2011.

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This meant that the United States is required to develop a whole new vessel to take American astronauts to the Earth’s natural satellite, the Moon. In 2004, former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin had said that completion of the Space Station would open a window for a spectrum of opportunities for commercial companies to transport cargo and even astronauts to the ISS. Meanwhile, Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2003, a company that he described with an objective of turning humanity into a multi-planetary civilisation.

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'Better for US...'

Even though Musk’s company continued to face both monetary and administrational challenges including the explosion of Falcon 9 on the launch pad in 2016 and this pushed the timeline of commercial flights with several years, the historic launch of May 30 this year lifted spirits of both NASA and SpaceX, chiefs of which even indulged in a war of words. Despite the rocky road, the commander of SpaceX’s first crew, Doug Hurley reportedly stressed, “Bottom line: I think it’s just better for us to be flying from the United States if we can do that,” he told The Associated Press last week.

Moreover, the May 30 mission was hailed as ‘history-making’ because it marked the return of the US to space after nearly nine years. America had been successful in sending off US astronauts in a commercially built spacecraft from American soil after 2011 when the last Space Shuttle went off. However, the Space Shuttle crew had placed an American flag on the International Space Station that said “only to be removed by crew launching from KSC”, that is Kennedy Space Center. SpaceX, then claimed in 2011 that a project which will mark the return of the flag was underway, Musk recalled that it on May 31 as the mission was accomplished with Falcon 9 launch. 

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk had even retweeted the post by the company from 2011 when it announced that ‘flag capturing sequence’ has commenced. While most people on the internet had forgotten about the claim, the ‘man of few words’, Musk made sure that his followers remember his ‘promise’ has been delivered by the NASA-SpaceX Crew Dragon launch on May 30 from the Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39A.

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