December 17th, 2020
2020 has been very good to SpaceX with the aerospace transportation firm surpassing a number of milestones and achieving virtually every goal it set out for itself during the year. Both the company’s autonomous and crewed space vehicles operated without any major failures as SpaceX earned its NASA flight certification, along with deals with the US Space Force and private industry. There was one mishap, with its prototype Starship vehicle, during 2020 and even that only slightly set back SpaceX’s march towards market dominance.
The year started with a splash — literally. On January 7th, more than a month after it had launched, the Dragon cargo capsule of mission CRS-19 hit the water just west of Baja, California where crews recovered the capsule as well as 3,800 pounds of scientific gear and experiments. The following and aptly named CRS-20 mission in March marked the 20th time overall that SpaceX vehicles have resupplied the ISS and returned safely to Earth. Over the course of those 20 missions, SpaceX has hauled some 94,000 pounds of supplies and equipment up to the ISS and ferried another 74,000 pounds of cargo back down. A final delivery to the ISS in April marked both the end of SpaceX’s original contract with NASA and the final flight of the first-generation Dragon cargo capsule design, which has since been replaced with the updated and more versatile Dragon 2.