(ORDO NEWS) — Elon Musk founded SpaceX on March 14, 2002 with dreams of building reusable rockets, private spacecraft, and other advanced technologies. What has the company accomplished in one fifth of a century?
1. SpaceX has made Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy first stage reuse technology a reality, and reuse is indeed key to the company’s ability to drive down the cost of launching rockets into space.
SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket / ©SpaceX
2. SpaceX brought back manned orbital spaceflight to the US. When NASA decommissioned its space shuttle fleet in 2011, the agency provided support to several US space companies working to develop replacement vehicles, including SpaceX.
In May 2020, SpaceX launched the first Demo-2 test mission, during which the Crew Dragon crew carrying astronauts Behnken and Hurley were successfully flown to the International Space Station.
NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken / ©NASA
3. SpaceX is moving in the wake of space tourism. Space tourism made a significant breakthrough in 2021 with people flying into space with SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin.
However, only SpaceX can boast the first-ever commercial crewed flight to Earth orbit, which lasted three days aboard the SpaceX Dragon in September 2021, as part of the Inspiration4 mission.
Crew of Inspiration4 / ©Inspiration4
4. Create your own space suits. In 2017, Musk unveiled the spacesuits that NASA astronauts and others aboard his spacecraft will use during flights.
©NASA
5. Creation of own Internet constellation of Starlink satellites.
Starlink / ©SpaceX
6. Development of Starship, a duo of rocket and spacecraft designed to take people to Mars and other distant places in the solar system.
Starship / ©SpaceX
The results achieved by SpaceX in 20 years are simply amazing. It’s only the beginning!
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