Late last night, SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket on the company’s 20th cargo mission to the International Space Station, sending more than 4,500 pounds of supplies and science experiments to the three crew members living in orbit.
While it was a fairly routine launch for the company, it was also a significant one: the final resupply mission for NASA under SpaceX’s original contract with the space agency. That doesn’t mean SpaceX will be done launching supplies to the ISS, though. In 2016, NASA awarded SpaceX a second contract to continuing launching cargo missions to the station through 2024. And once this new round of launches begins, SpaceX’s hardware will get an upgrade too. The company has long used its Dragon 1 cargo capsule to carry all the supplies to the ISS, but now, SpaceX will begin using its new Dragon 2 capsule.
The mission’s success shows just how far spaceflight has advanced over the past ten years and ever since SpaceX won a $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract from NASA in 2008. Reusable boosters and spacecraft are pretty common and even expected now in fact, Dragon’s second version will have the capability to fly to the space station for up to five times, whereas version one can only last for three.
