Falcon 9 Taking Flight

History was made at 3:22 p.m. EST on Saturday, May 30th, 2020, when the Falcon 9 launched into space (watch the video here). This moment marked a new era in space travel: astronauts were sent into space by a private company, SpaceX, instead of by NASA.

The two astronauts aboard, Robert L. Behnken and Douglas O. Hurley were selected by NASA to be pioneers of the private space-flight industry. They were the first to go to space from American soil since 2011 when the US space program was retired. In the interim period, astronauts could only access the International Space Station (ISS) by paying Russia to transport them.

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SpaceX was founded by billionaire Elon Musk who has hopes to colonize Mars. In fact, the company's mission is to develop "fully reusable launch vehicles" capable of transporting humans to Mars. Musk founded the company in 2002 with little knowledge of space flight. SpaceX's Falcon 1 rocket failed during the first 3 tries but launched successfully in 2008.

You might be asking yourself, "Why Mars?" Luckily, SpaceX has devoted an entire webpage to answering this question! You can visit the link for a more in-depth answer to this question, but some key reasons cited are: (1) the day length is very similar to ours (24 h 37 min), (2) the force of gravity is 38% of Earth's, and (3) Mars is considered one of "Earth's closest habitable neighbors."

Fun Fact: Mars has approximately 40% of the amount of gravity we have on Earth; this means that if you lived on the surface of Mars, you could jump up and down and lift objects more easily!

In 2012, SpaceX became the first private company to visit the space station, using the Dragon spacecraft. Three years later, SpaceX became the first of its kind to successfully land and recycle the rocket booster; previously, this piece of equipment was dropped into the ocean. And in 2017, SpaceX achieved the first "reflight": the Falcon 9 successfully returned to earth twice.

The company focuses on reusability because being able to recycle rockets would significantly reduce the cost of space travel (SpaceX states that the cost would be reduced "by a hundredfold"). It seeks to make space travel commercially available, mimicking the model of commercial global air travel. Think about how many airplanes take flight each day. Imagine if we had to re-build each of those airplanes before their flights; it would be very expensive and time-consuming! As such, SpaceX launch vehicles are able to land either on a landing zone or on a spaceport drone ship on the ocean.

Seeing that SpaceX was a promising company, NASA selected both SpaceX and Boeing to invest money in with a goal of funding ambitious projects (like sending astronauts to Mars!).

SpaceX is currently designing a launch vehicle called the Starship to travel to Mars and more. It will be able to hold over 100 metric tons, making it the most powerful rocket ever. It will enter Mar's atmosphere at a speed of 7.5 km/s (or about 4.66 miles/s - imagine how crazy fast that is!). It is designed with a heat shield since it will be extremely hot upon entering Mar's atmosphere. It uses a Raptor engine, which is small but mighty - only 1.3 m in diameter and 3.1 m tall!

Hopefully, you've learned something new and exciting about SpaceX and the future of space travel!