Crew Dragon flies astronauts

On 30 May 2020, Crew Dragon "Endeavour" lifted off from Launch Complex 39A carrying NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken. It was the first time in history a private company launched humans to orbit — and the first crewed launch from American soil since the Space Shuttle's retirement in 2011, ending nearly a decade of US reliance on Russian Soyuz seats.

Dragon docked autonomously with the International Space Station about 19 hours later, and the booster landed at sea. The mission certified SpaceX's Commercial Crew system under NASA's most demanding human-rating standards.

What followed was not a one-off but a cadence: SpaceX has since flown astronauts for NASA and private missions routinely, becoming the workhorse of human spaceflight in the West. A company that didn't exist in 2001 had become the nation's primary means of putting people in space.