December 8, 2010: SpaceX Dragon 1 became the first commercial spacecraft to successfully orbit and successfully return it to Earth.
SpaceX became the first commercial company to release a spacecraft—the Dragon capsule—into orbit and successfully return it to Earth.
SpaceX Dragon 1 is a class of fourteen partially reusable cargo spacecraft developed by SpaceX, an American private space transportation company. The spacecraft flew 23 missions between 2010 and 2020. Dragon was launched into orbit by the company’s Falcon 9 launch vehicle to resupply the International Space Station (ISS). It was succeeded by the Dragon 2 spacecraft which has both crewed and cargo versions.
During its maiden flight in December 2010, Dragon became the first commercially built and operated spacecraft to be recovered successfully from orbit. On 25 May 2012, Dragon became the first commercial spacecraft to successfully rendezvous with and attach to the ISS.[7][8][9] SpaceX contracted to deliver cargo to the ISS under NASA‘s Commercial Resupply Services program, and Dragon began regular cargo flights in October 2012.[10][11][12][13] With the Dragon spacecraft and the Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus, NASA sought to increase its partnerships with domestic commercial aviation and aeronautics industry.[14]
On 3 June 2017, the C106 capsule, largely assembled from previously flown components from the CRS-4 mission in September 2014, was launched again for the first time on CRS-11, after being refurbished.[15]
The last flight of the Dragon 1 spacecraft launched 7 March 2020 (UTC) on cargo resupply mission (CRS-20) to International Space Station (ISS). This was the last mission of SpaceX’s first Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-1) contract, and marked the retirement of the Dragon 1 fleet. Further SpaceX commercial resupply flights to ISS under the second Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-2) program use the Cargo Dragon variant of the Dragon 2 spacecraft, which is capable of fully-automated docking with the ISS.[16]
