Blast-Off: The New Era Of Private Space Exploration

The future of space exploration has never been so exciting.

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As NASA partners with SpaceX and its Crew Dragon to land two of its astronauts at the International Space Station - the first successful launch in more than nine years from US soil - many are asking what’ll come next, and how we can utilize the skills of private space firms to venture further and make history.

MAKING HISTORY

On Saturday, May 30 at 15:22, two American astronauts lifted off from NASA’s iconic Flordiaian launchpad, once graced by Apollo, and made their way to the International Space Station on May 31, a journey that would take them more than 400 kilometers from Earth. The trip itself wasn’t particularly groundbreaking, it had been taken hundreds of times before by astronauts around the world, but quickly attracted the attention of aerospace enthusiasts, partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic forcing us into lockdown, but also because it marked the first time astronauts used a spaceship built and launched by a private firm, in this case, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and its Crew Dragon; the beginning of a new era for space travel.