SpaceX began
developing the Dragon spacecraft in late 2004, making a public announcement in 2006 with a plan of entering service in 2009. The contract called for 12 flights, with an overall minimum of of cargo to be carried to the ISS. The primary proximity-operations sensor for the Dragon spacecraft, the DragonEye, was tested in early 2009 during the
STS-127 mission, when it was mounted near the docking port of the
Space Shuttle Endeavour and used while the Shuttle approached the
International Space Station. The DragonEye's
lidar and
thermography (thermal imaging) abilities were both tested successfully. The COTS UHF Communication Unit (CUCU) and Crew Command Panel (CCP) were delivered to the ISS during the late 2009
STS-129 mission. The CUCU allows the ISS to communicate with Dragon and the CCP allows ISS crew members to issue basic commands to Dragon. As a condition of the NASA CRS contract, SpaceX analyzed the orbital
radiation environment on all Dragon systems, and how the spacecraft would respond to spurious radiation events. That analysis and the Dragon design – which uses an overall
Fault tolerance triple redundant computer architecture, rather than individual
radiation hardening of each computer processor – was reviewed by independent experts before being approved by
NASA for the cargo flights. No further financial information was disclosed. CRS-2 launches began in late 2019.
Demonstration flights manipulator during the COTS 2 mission. The first flight of the Falcon 9, a
private flight, occurred in June 2010 and launched a
stripped-down version of the Dragon capsule. This
Dragon Spacecraft Qualification Unit had initially been used as a ground test bed to validate several of the capsule's systems. During the flight, the unit's primary mission was to relay aerodynamic data captured during the ascent. It was not designed to survive re-entry, and did not. NASA contracted for three test flights from SpaceX, but later reduced that number to two. The first Dragon spacecraft launched on its first mission – contracted to NASA as
COTS Demo Flight 1 – on December 8, 2010, and was successfully recovered following re-entry to
Earth's atmosphere. The mission also marked the second flight of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle. The DragonEye sensor flew again on
STS-133 in February 2011 for further on-orbit testing. In November 2010, the
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had issued a re-entry license for the Dragon capsule, the first such license ever awarded to a commercial vehicle. The
second Dragon flight, also contracted to
NASA as a demonstration mission, launched successfully on May 22, 2012, after NASA had approved SpaceX's proposal to combine the COTS 2 and 3 mission objectives into a single Falcon 9/Dragon flight, renamed COTS 2+. Dragon conducted orbital tests of its navigation systems and abort procedures, before being grappled by the ISS'
Canadarm2 and successfully berthing with the station on May 25, 2012, to offload its cargo. Dragon returned to
Earth on May 31, 2012, landing as scheduled in the Pacific Ocean, and was again successfully recovered. On August 23, 2012, NASA Administrator
Charles Bolden announced that SpaceX had completed all required milestones under the COTS contract, and was cleared to begin
operational resupply missions to the ISS.
Returning research materials from orbit Dragon spacecraft can return of cargo to
Earth, which can be all unpressurized disposal mass, or up to of pressurized cargo, from the ISS,
Operational flights Dragon was launched on its
first operational CRS flight on October 8, 2012, of cargo to the
International Space Station, including
Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER). The first stage of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle landed successfully at
Landing Zone 1. This mission launched for the first time a refurbished Dragon capsule, serial number
C106, which had flown in September 2014 on the
CRS-4 mission, and was the first time since 2011 a reused spacecraft arrived at the ISS.
Gemini SC-2 capsule is the only other reused capsule, but it was only reflown suborbitally in 1966.
CRS-12, SpaceX's twelfth CRS mission, was successfully launched on the first "Block 4" version of the
Falcon 9 on August 14, 2017, from
Kennedy Space Center LC-39A at the first attempt. This mission delivered of pressurized mass and unpressurized. The external payload manifested for this flight was the CREAM
cosmic-ray detector. This was the last flight of a newly built Dragon capsule; further missions used refurbished spacecraft.
CRS-13, SpaceX's thirteenth CRS mission, was the second use of a previously flown Dragon capsule, but the first time in concordance with a reused first-stage booster. It was successfully launched on December 15, 2017, from
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 40 at the first attempt. This was the first launch from SLC-40 since the
AMOS-6 pad anomaly. The booster was the previously flown core from the
CRS-11 mission. This mission delivered of pressurized mass and unpressurized. It returned from orbit and
splashdown on January 13, 2018, making it the first
space capsule to be reflown to orbit more than once.
CRS-14, SpaceX's fourteenth CRS mission, was the third reuse of a previously flown Dragon capsule. It was successfully launched on April 2, 2018, from
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station SLC-40. It was successfully berthed to the ISS on April 4, 2018, and remained berthed for a month before returning cargo and science experiments back to
Earth.
CRS-15,
CRS-16,
CRS-17,
CRS-18,
CRS-19, and
CRS-20 were all flown with previously flown capsules.
Crewed development program In 2006, Elon Musk stated that SpaceX had built "a prototype flight crew capsule, including a thoroughly tested 30-man-day life-support system". A video simulation of the launch escape system's operation was released in January 2011. Musk stated in 2010 that the developmental cost of a crewed Dragon and Falcon 9 would be between US$800 million and US$1 billion. In 2009 and 2010, Musk suggested on several occasions that plans for a crewed variant of the Dragon were proceeding and had a two-to-three-year timeline to completion. SpaceX submitted a bid for the third phase of CCDev,
CCiCap. This evolved into the Crew dragon variant of the
SpaceX Dragon 2. == Development funding ==