Douglas Adams summed up space travel fairly well, saying, “Space… is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind bogglingly big it is.” In the past few months, a private company was able to dock an unmanned capsule with the International Space Station. This feat of engineering and science foreshadows the next step in humanity’s relationship with the cosmos.
Last year, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) flew its last space shuttle mission. Mission STS-135 came to a successful end when the shuttle Atlantis came to land at Kennedy Space Center. Since then, the remaining shuttles have been closed down and retired. Retirement will not be mundane for these shuttles, however. All of them are going to museums to become featured exhibits. The shuttles have been touted as the “most complex vehicles of all time” and will be displayed as such at places like the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and Cape Canaveral.
The end of the era of the space shuttle leaves one big question: What’s next for space travel? There is one answer, pushed on by President Obama. That answer is: commercial space travel. Commercial space travel has been an idea tossed around since the 90’s but has finally come into the light as the successor of public funding. In the past few weeks, one company has surpassed all the others. SpaceX has completed the first commercial space mission to the International Space Station and back.
Commercial space travel has been an idea tossed around since the 90’s but has finally come into the light as the successor of public funding.
The SpaceX Dragon module is an unmanned module that was designed to be able to carry payloads to and from the Space Station. The design was backed by NASA and SpaceX was allowed to use Kennedy Space Center as its launch base. The test launch of the Dragon module was unmanned but exceeded expectations at every step of the test. The module was able to dock with the station, exchange payloads, and safely land back on Earth. The module was reminiscent of the Apollo missions. Recovery efforts were made after the module parachuted into the ocean. Everything went right – the launch, the rendezvous with the Station and the planned ocean splash landing off Mexico.
This successful mission is the herald of more to come. NASA has a 12 supply mission contract awaiting approval with SpaceX. These missions would take over for Russian and European space agencies as the primary source of supplies for the astronauts and scientists at the ISS. After the astounding success of this first mission, the CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk, hinted at a future, non-ISS mission. A manned mission to Mars. With such success so early in their space program, SpaceX will be there soon.
View the highlight reel from the launch:
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