Spanish
Miami (USA).- SpaceX, the company founded by the magnate Elon Musk, commemorates this week the fifth anniversary of its first manned commercial flight in collaboration with NASA, a milestone that marked the rebirth of space launches from American soil, ending the dependence on Russian spacecraft.
On May 30, 2020, at the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic, the Demo-2 mission took off from Florida, carrying NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a Dragon capsule.
Before that date, the United States paid for about nine years between 35 and 85 million dollars for each of at least 60 seats they needed for their astronauts to travel on the Soyuz rockets, from Roscosmos, bound for the orbital laboratory.
That monopoly, which allowed the Russian agency to raise prices, ended with the historic Demo-2, the first manned launch from the United States after the 2011 retirement of the now obsolete and expensive Space Shuttle and demonstrated SpaceX's ability to safely and more cost-effectively transport humans into space.
Since then, SpaceX has carried out more than a dozen crewed missions under NASA's Commercial Crew Program, transporting not only American astronauts, but also international and civilian astronauts on private flights, such as the Inspiration4 mission in 2021.Among the four civilians of the Inspiration4, the first fully private orbital mission without professional astronauts, was businessman Jared Isaacman, who has been nominated to lead NASA by the Trump Administration and whose approval currently hangs in the Senate.
Isaacman and his three companions orbited the Earth for three days at about 590 kilometers, an altitude greater than the ISS, which is at 420 kilometers. In addition to the incursion of non-astronauts, SpaceX flights are driving the return of human space activity from other countries.
It is the case of the company Axiom, which is planning its fourth mission to the ISS on June 8th in SpaceX spacecraft and which will mark the "return" of India, Poland, and Hungary to manned spaceflights, with the first flight sponsored by their respective governments in over 40 years.Axiom's first trip, in 2022, was the first private mission to the ISS, while the second (2023) had the first private female astronaut to command a mission (Peggy Whitson) and the inclusion of the first Saudis in said microgravity laboratory.
In 2024, the third mission of Axiom, a Texas-based company, was the first entirely with European crew members (Italy, Turkey, Sweden) under the command of the Spanish-American and former NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría, who has already commanded two of them.
An alliance beyond politics
Since 2014, under the government of Democrat Barack Obama (2009-2017), SpaceX won the contract to develop the Crew Dragon, years before Trump's first presidency, during which Demo-2 was launched.
In 2017 Trump accelerated the Artemis program, for the permanent human return to the Moon and the arrival on Mars, benefiting Musk's company and his super Starship rocket, but NASA has assured that the contracts are based on merit and not on the friendship between the two.
Since 2020, the NASA-SpaceX partnership has been key to ensuring continued access to the ISS for both crew and cargo. The space agency has also highlighted the reliability and cost-effectiveness of the Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon capsules, both reusable to reduce the cost of spaceflights.
Costs with SpaceX dropped from about 450 million dollars per mission to about 55 million dollars. In addition, the shuttles required two years of preparation between flights, while the Crew Dragons, only months.
You may be interested in: SpaceX prepares to conduct the ninth flight of the Starship from Texas on Tuesday
With a design from the 1970s, the space shuttles used analog technology and efficient non-reusable systems, while the Falcon 9 rockets recycle 90% of the hardware. The payload also increased from 24.5 tons to low orbit to 63.8 tons in the case of the Falcon Heavy rocket of the Starship.
"The Commercial Crew Program has restored the U.S. capability to launch astronauts and has opened up new opportunities for commercial space exploration," according to NASA.
Furthermore, with the Starship, the world's largest and most powerful rocket, which conducted its ninth test this Tuesday with mixed results, Musk's company plans to support NASA in its missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
