Crew Dragon is seen at the ISS just before docking on March 3, 2019, during the Demo-1 test flight. Source: NASACrew Dragon is seen at the ISS just before docking on March 3, 2019, during the Demo-1 test flight. Source: NASA

A Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket launched the SpaceX Crew Demo-1 mission at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on March 2, kicking off the first orbital test flight of NASA’s Commercial Crew program. The inaugural flight of the Crew Dragon spacecraft is designed to test the end-to-end capabilities of the new astronaut capsule and brings the U.S. closer to the return of human launches to the International Space Station (ISS) for the first time since 2011 — the last space shuttle mission.

The craft will spend five days docked with the ISS, before making a parachute-aided splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean on March 8. The only passenger on the shakedown flight is Ripley the test dummy fitted with sensors to test the effects of the Crew Dragon environment on humans. Engineers will use the data, along with planned upgrades and additional qualification testing, to further prepare for Demo-2, the crewed flight test that will carry two NASA astronauts to the ISS in a mission planned for July.

The spacecraft docked itself at the space station in a first for SpaceX (watch this video), whose cargo-only versions of the Dragon spacecraft had to be captured by a robotic arm controlled by astronauts and then attached to the station. Crew Dragon docked itself at a new parking spot on the station called an International Docking Adapter.

NASA turned to private companies, SpaceX and Boeing, and has provided them with $8 billion to build and operate crew capsules to ferry astronauts to and from the space station. Currently, Russian rockets are the only way to get astronauts to the 250-mile-high outpost and at high cost — NASA currently pays $82 million per seat.

To contact the author of this article, email shimmelstein@globalspec.com