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NASA has eagerly awaited this mission for a decade.
The United States has not been able to get its own astronauts to and from the International Space Station since 2011, when the Space Shuttle program was withdrawn. For years, astronauts from around the world, including the United States, traveled aboard Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft to the space station. SpaceX changed that with the inaugural Crew Dragon manned flight over the summer. The “Demo-2” test mission brought NASA astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS, where they stayed for two months.
The main purpose of that trip was to collect data on the performance of the Crew Dragon hood. Today, the spacecraft that carries astronauts has seen “many improvements” based on what NASA and SpaceX learned over the summer, according to Steve Stich, NASA manager for the program overseeing SpaceX’s Crew Dragon. The spacecraft’s solar panels, for example, were reinforced to make them more durable.
Future plans
Now that the Dragon Crew has been officially certified as a vehicle worthy of transporting humans, NASA plans to use it and use it a lot. The agency wants to make several trips to the ISS each year, bringing new groups of astronauts and, perhaps, one day, civilians.
Those frequent trips will keep the ISS better staffed than it has been for the past decade, and that should dramatically increase the amount of scientific research that can be carried out, according to NASA.
