Results tagged “Dragon spacecraft”

SpaceX's proposal to accelerate evolution of the Dragon spacecraft to a crew transportation system.

This is a 2:46 video of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft on-orbit starting at the T00:53:50 minute mark.

Other than watching the video of the launch there's nothing like seeing great still images of an event. These images provided by SpaceX and Chris Thompson show the spectacular liftoff, on-orbit images and splashdown images.

After a nearly flawless launch of Falcon 9 and recovery of the Dragon spacecraft, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was almost speechless during the first part of the press conference saying "he was in semi shock" at how well the launch went. Musk said he was extremely thankful to NASA for helping get SpaceX to this point and that SpaceX had built upon decades of NASA work. However SpaceX today accomplished something no private company has ever done before and only three nations had, he launched and recovered a spacecraft successfully. Musk said if astronauts had been aboard they would have had a gentle ride to space and returned safely experiencing only about 4G's comparable to a roller coaster ride.

Heading into the first demo flight of NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program SpaceX and NASA were both quick to remind people that this was a test program doing something SpaceX had never done before. From the look of today's launch it seems they needed have worried so much. The first flight of Falcon 9 carrying the Dragon spacecraft to orbit appears to have been perfect.