Engineering News

The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) announced on Tuesday that it had certified SpaceX’s Commercial Crew transport system, allowing it to be regularly used to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS). This certification follows the successful crewed SpaceX Crew Dragon test mission to the ISS earlier this year, itself preceded by an uncrewed test flight and by years of design, development and test work.

SpaceX was founded and is led by South African-born engineer and entrepreneur Elon Musk. Crew Dragon is just the latest in a long line of spaceflight successes achieved by his company. The certification also followed the completion of a thorough Flight Readiness Review ahead of the first regular flight, known as the ‘Crew-1’ mission, which will carry four astronauts – three American and one Japanese – to the ISS.

“I’m extremely proud to say we are returning regular human spaceflight launches to American soil on an American rocket and spacecraft,” highlighted Nasa administrator Jim Bridenstine. “This certification milestone is an incredible achievement from Nasa and SpaceX that highlights the progress we can make working together with commercial industry.”

The Crew-1 mission is scheduled to launch from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Flight Centre, at Cape Canaveral in the US State of Florida, on Saturday evening US Eastern Standard Time (which is seven hours behind South African time). The Crew Dragon capsule has been integrated with the Falcon 9 rocket (also a SpaceX product) which will launch it, and the complete spacecraft is already on Launch Pad 39A. Following Nasa tradition, the capsule has been given its own individual name, like a ship; that name is Resilience.

“Thank you to Nasa for their continued support of SpaceX and partnership in achieving this goal,” affirmed Musk. “I could not be more proud of everyone at SpaceX and all of our suppliers who worked incredibly hard to develop, test, and fly the first commercial human spaceflight system in history to be certified by Nasa. This is a great honour that inspires confidence in our endeavour to return to the Moon, travel to Mars, and ultimately help humanity become multi-planetary.”

The Crew Dragon is the first new spacecraft to be certified by Nasa for regular crewed flights since the space shuttle, almost 40 years ago. “Certification moves us from the design and test phase into the crew rotation phase of our work, but we will not stop making sure every flight, Including Nasa’s Space[X] Crew-1 mission, will be approached with the same rigour we have put into making this the best system it can be for our astronauts,” assured Nasa associate administrator: Human Exploration and Operation Mission Directorate Kathy Lueders.