[TESLARATI] SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft successfully returned to Port Canaveral aboard recovery vessel GO Searcher, wrapping up an orbital launch debut that tracked through its milestones so flawlessly that Commercial Crew Program Deputy Manager Steve Stich went so far as to say that the spacecraft "did better than [NASA] expected."The culmination of the better part of a decade of constant work and NASA support, the flawless success of SpaceX’s DM-1 Crew Dragon mission is a testament ‐ above all else ‐ to the many hundreds of thousands or millions of hours SpaceX employees have put into the spacecraft’s design, production, operation, and recovery. While just one half of a critical pair of demonstrations, DM-1’s success should translate into extremely good odds for Crew Dragon’s Demo Mission 2 (DM-2), in which SpaceX will launch two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station on the company’s first crewed launch ever.
"I can’t believe how well the whole mission has gone. I think on every point, everything’s been nailed, all the way along‐particularly this last piece. We were all very excited to see re-entry and parachute and drogue deploy and main deploy, splashdown‐everything happened just perfectly, right on time the way that we expected it to. It was beautiful." ‐ Benji Reed, Director of Crew Mission Management, SpaceX
SpaceX Director of Crew Mission Management Benji Reed’s unqualified appraisal of Crew Dragon’s debut serves as a perfect example of the attitude almost universal throughout the company in the twilight of the mission’s completion. While sources suggest that there were more than a few hiccups during the mission, they were extremely mild and came as no surprise for what effectively amounted to the first shakeout mission of a brand new vehicle. According to CEO Elon Musk, Crew Dragon shares almost no hardware ‐ aside from its Draco thrusters ‐ with Cargo Dragon, the uncrewed orbital spacecraft SpaceX has now launched into orbit 17 times in the last eight years.