Nasa SpaceX mission: How we got to this point - BBC News

Elon Musk's SpaceX is flying people to the International Space Station (ISS) using the Crew Dragon vehicle.

On 14 January 2004, President George W Bush announced that the space shuttle would be retired after completion of the International Space Station (ISS).

The following year, then-Nasa chief Mike Griffin announced that the completion of the ISS would, for the first time, open up commercial opportunities for the routine transportation of cargo and astronauts to low-Earth orbit.

Nasa established a Commercial Crew & Cargo Program Office (C3PO) to oversee the effort.

At the time, SpaceX, the company started by South African-born entrepreneur Elon Musk was just a few years old.

When Nasa came out with the need to fly cargo to and from the International Space Station, we jumped on that.".

Fortunately, on 23 December 2008, Nasa awarded SpaceX with a $1.6bn contract to ferry cargo and supplies to the ISS.

The company's Dragon 1 capsule could carry cargo and supplies, but not humans.

But it would take time and, after the space shuttle was retired, Nasa had to fill the gap by paying Russia tens of millions of dollars per seat to fly its astronauts to the ISS on the Soyuz vehicle, which launches from Baikonur in Kazakhstan.

In March 2019, SpaceX performed a triumphant launch of the Crew Dragon without astronauts.

These mishaps, along with earlier funding shortfalls for the Commercial Crew Program, had introduced delays to an original timeline that would have seen SpaceX launch crew to the ISS in October 2016

Frustrated by the hold ups and the time SpaceX was spending on its Starship project to build a super heavy-lift launch vehicle, Nasa administrator Jim Bridenstine tweeted:

The SpaceX founder was referring to Nasa's Space Launch System rocket - designed to launch humans to the Moon - which has also been hit by delays and cost overruns

However, a successful in-flight test of the Crew Dragon's launch abort system in January 2020 helped clear the way for the historic first flight with astronauts from Florida's Kennedy Space Center on 30 May