SpaceX (California) : The first Unietd States private company to send astronauts to the International Space Station

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is an American aerospace manufacturer and space transportation services company headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the goal of reducing space transportation costs to enable the colonization of Mars. SpaceX has developed several launch vehicles and rocket engines, as well as the Dragon cargo spacecraft and the Starlink satellite constellation (providing internet access), and has flown humans and cargo to the International Space Station on the SpaceX Dragon 2.

In March 2019, SpaceX's Crew Dragon, the company's spacecraft designed to carry astronauts into space, completed its first test mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Prior to that, in 2012, the Dragon cargo spacecraft made history when it was the first private spacecraft to berth with the ISS. Since then, Dragon has continued carrying cargo to the ISS under commercial agreements with NASA.

Most recently, in the summer of 2020, SpaceX launched two NASA astronauts to the ISS aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft, making SpaceX the first private spaceflight company to send a crewed spacecraft to space. Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken left Earth for the space station on May 30, 2020 and returned home on Aug. 2, 2020.

The commercially built and operated spacecraft, known as the SpaceX Crew Dragon, carried astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley into space to the International Space Station as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, where they will be capable of staying for at least 210 days (as per NASA requirements).

The Dragon’s minimal interior and exterior design sports fully automated touchscreens and clean lines rather than dated switches and knobs and can seat up to four passengers – although only the centre two seats have been occupied for the preliminary test flight.

“This is a dream come true for me and everyone at SpaceX,” said Elon Musk, chief engineer at SpaceX in a statement. “It is the culmination of an incredible amount of work by the SpaceX team, by NASA and by a number of other partners in the process of making this happen. You can look at this as the results of a hundred thousand people roughly when you add up all the suppliers and everyone working incredibly hard to make this day happen.”

According to hk.asiatatler.com