The successful voyage of SpaceX's unmanned Crew Dragon to the International Space Station this weekend put the U.S. one tantalizing step closer to the day when American rockets will again ferry the nation's astronauts into space.
Sometime this summer, both Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and Boeing Co. are scheduled to launch crews toward the ISS, ending a long drought in which the U.S. has had to hitch rides in Russia's Soyuz capsules. NASA awarded them contracts worth as much as a combined $6.8 billion in 2014 to fly U.S. astronauts to the ISS, splitting what's known as the Commercial Crew program to avoid a monopoly.
Saturday's launch of the crew cabin from Florida and Sunday's docking at the ISS mark "a major milestone for SpaceX and for the nation," said Taber MacCullum, chairman of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, in a statement. "This mission puts us a step closer toward re-establishing American access of American astronauts, on American rockets, from American soil to the ISS for the first time since the Space Shuttle retired in 2011."