Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk on Wednesday tweeted to celebrate SpaceX’s first to-and-fro mission to the space station ten years ago.
What Happened: The billionaire entrepreneur’s private space company had, in May 2012, launched a flight to demonstrate the capability of human and commercial cargo supply to the International Space Station (ISS).
The flight was launched from Cape Canaveral on May 22, 2012. Dragon stayed with ISS for nearly six days during which the astronauts unloaded cargo and then reloaded it with Earth-bound cargo, following which it returned to earth on May 31.
“Dragon successfully docked with the orbiting lab on May 25, becoming the first privately developed vehicle in history to successfully attach to the space station,” SpaceX wrote in a Twitter post.
“Now, ten years later, SpaceX has a reusable Dragon fleet capable of supporting both crew and cargo missions.”
Why It Matters: SpaceX has since come far and made multiple trips to the space station. The reusable Falcon 9 rocket has also launched multiple satellites to earth’s low orbit including ones carrying its own high speed, satellite-based internet service Starlink.
Musk dreams of making life multi-planetary and colonizing Mars. The billionaire entrepreneur has been building a massive rocket called Starship, which he says is capable of ferrying tonnes of human and commercial cargo to Mars.
SpaceX is currently awaiting approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to launch the Starship flight. The space company is confident it will secure the approval and has plans to conduct a test flight for the massive Starship rocket from Texas sometime over the next two months.
