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Column: NASA and SpaceX make history

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NASA Astronauts Doug Hurley (Hurley flew on STS‐135, the final space shuttle mission in July 2011) and Bob Behnken are orbiting the Earth aboard the…
NASA Astronauts Doug Hurley (Hurley flew on STS‐135, the final space shuttle mission in July 2011) and Bob Behnken are orbiting the Earth aboard the International Space Station, after arriving there on a Crew Dragon spacecraft made by a private company called SpaceX.
They achieved orbit Saturday following the successful launch of their Falcon 9 rocket, which by the way, was also made by SpaceX.
The first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket made a perfect recovery, landing at sea, which is another crewed spaceflight first. Previously all crewed mission first stage rockets were “one and done” discarded after one use.
The space shuttle missions recovered the solid rocket boosters (SRBs) for reuse as well as the space shuttle orbiter.
The historic mission, called Demo-2, short for Crew Dragon Demonstration Flight Two, is a major step forward in NASA’s Commercial Crew Program which was started by the previous administration in 2010 to partner with commercial companies in achieving crewed access to Low Earth Orbit (LEO).
In 2014 Boeing and SpaceX received contracts to build crew-capable spacecraft and launch them to the International Space Station (ISS).
Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner had some major setbacks during a December 2019 uncrewed test flight that failed to reach orbit.

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