The Crew Dragon launched astronauts from US soil for the first time since the last Shuttle flight in 2011. But it's a very different type of vehicle to Nasa's retired spaceplane.
Elon Musk says human spaceflight had always been the fundamental goal for his pioneering company SpaceX.
The entrepreneur achieved that ambition on Saturday 30 May 2020, when the Crew Dragon spacecraft carried Nasa astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken into orbit for a rendezvous with the International Space Station (ISS).
But the company had to walk before it could run. Crew Dragon evolved from an earlier design, called Dragon 1, which launched 20 times on missions to deliver cargo to the ISS between May 2012 and March 2020.
In May 2014, Musk unveiled the seven-seat Crew Dragon concept during an event at SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne, California.
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52840482
