SPACEX CREW-1
© NASA
2020 has been an exciting year for SpaceX; in May it became the first private spaceflight company to launch a crewed mission to space. In this image the four astronauts – NASA’s Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, and JAXA’s Soichi Noguchi – are approaching the International Space Station (ISS) after a 27-hour voyage, where they will spend around six months. Behind the Crew Dragon spacecraft, called Resilience, is Earth, enveloped by clouds. This mission has some notable achievements, including the first flight of a NASA certified commercial system for transportation of crew, the first international crew to launch on an US commercial craft and the first time the Earth-orbiting space station will increase crew size to seven to allow more time for research. With the success of the spacecraft docking, NASA has also achieved another of its aims of the Commercial Crew Program, which began in 2011 after the retirement of the Space Shuttles.