Timeline of SpaceX
From Timelines
This is a timeline of Spacex.
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Big picture
| Time period | Development summary | More details |
|---|
Full timeline
| Year | Month and date | Event type | Details | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | Elon Musk conceptualizes "Mars Oasis", a project to land a miniature experimental greenhouse containing seeds with dehydrated gel on Mars to grow plants on Martian soil, "so this would be the furthest that life's ever traveled"[1] in an attempt to regain public interest in space exploration and increase the budget of NASA.[2][3] | |||
| 2001 | October | Elon Musk travells to Moscow with aerospace supplies fixer Jim Cantrell, and Adeo Ressi (Musk's best friend from college), to buy refurbished ICBMs (Dnepr) that could send payloads into space.[4] | ||
| 2002 | Elon Musk launches SpaceX[5], with original base established in El Segundo, California.[6] | |||
| 2008 | September 28 | Spacex achieves the first privately funded liquid-fueled rocket to reach orbit (Falcon 1 Flight 4).[7][5] | ||
| 2008 | December | NASA awards SpaceX Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract for US$1.6 billion.[8][9] | ||
| 2009 | July | Falcon 1 Flight 5 becomes the first privately developed liquid fuel rocket to deliver a commercial satellite to Earth orbit.[9][5] | ||
| 2010 | June | Falcon 9 meets 100% of mission objectives on the first flight.[9][5] | ||
| 2010 | December 8 | SpaceX Dragon becomes the first privately developed spacecraft in history to re-enter from low-Earth orbit.[9] | ||
| 2010 | December 9 | Spacex becomes the first privately funded company to successfully launch, orbit, and recover a spacecraft (Falcon 9 Flight 2).[7][9][5][6] | ||
| 2011 | Spacex announces Grasshopper program to develop reusable rockets.[5] | |||
| 2012 | May | Spacex becomes the first private company to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station (Falcon 9 Flight 3).[7][9][5][6][6] | ||
| 2012 | October | SpaceX's robotic Dragon capsule makes its first resupply mission to the International Space Station, bringing 1,000 lbs of food and cargo to the astronauts on board.[10][6] | ||
| 2013 | March | SpaceX completes the first 24-storey test flight of a newly developed rocket, the Grasshopper. Meant to be a prototype for a reusable rocket into space, it safely returns to Earth, landing upright.[6] | ||
| 2013 | October | The Grasshopper program finishes with a 744m flight, hover, and landing.[9] | ||
| 2013 | December 3 | Spacex becomes the first private company to send a satellite into geosynchronous orbit (Falcon 9 Flight 7).[7] | ||
| 2013 | December | Falcon 9 reaches Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit.[9][5] | ||
| 2014 | April | Falcon 9 first stage lands on barge in ocean, but is destroyed by heavy seas.[5] | ||
| 2014 | June | Falcon 9 reusable test vehicle flies 1000 meters.[9] | ||
| 2014 | September | NASA awards SpaceX a US$2.6 billion contract to fly American astronauts, and announces that SpaceX and Boeing will be the two companies developing spacecraft to send astronauts to the International Space Station. SpaceX’s crew capsule is called the [[w:Dragon 2 | Dragon V2]].[9][6] | |
| 2015 | January | SpaceX begins a series of first stage landing attempts of its Falcon 9 rocket on an autonomous spaceport drone ship.[9] The rocket crashes and burns.[6] | ||
| 2015 | May | Crew Dragon tests launch abort system, an emergency escape measure designed to pull the crew capsule free of its Falcon 9 rocket in the event of a launch failure.[9][11] | ||
| 2015 | June | A Falcon9 rocket explodes during takeoff.[6] | ||
| 2015 | December 22 | Spacex achieves the first landing of an orbital rocket's first stage on land (Falcon 9 Flight 20).[7][9][5][6] | ||
| 2016 | April 8 | Spacex achieves the first landing of an orbital rocket's first stage on an ocean platform (Falcon 9 Flight 23).[7][9][5] | ||
| 2017 | March 30 | Spacex achieves the first controlled flyback and recovery of a payload fairing (Falcon 9 Flight 32)[12][9] | ||
| 2017 | June 3 | Spacex launches the first reflight of a commercial cargo spacecraft (Falcon 9 Flight 35).[13][9] | ||
| 2017 | June | Refurbished SpaceX Dragon ship flies to the International Space Station, becoming the first time the same unmanned spacecraft has returned to the station.[5] | ||
| 2017 | September | New rocket booster, the BFR rocket is announced, along with updated plans for Mars colonization.[5] | ||
| 2017 | November | SpaceX plans launch of the most powerful rocket since the Saturn V last left for the moon in 1973.[5] |
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See also
External links
References
- ↑ "Miles O'Brien – Journalist".
- ↑ McKnight, John Carter (25 September 2001). "Elon Musk, Life to Mars Foundation". Mars Now, a weekly column. Space Frontier Foundation.
- ↑ Musk, Elon. "Risky Business". IEEE Spectrum. Retrieved 4 December 2017.
- ↑ Andrew Chaikin. "Is SpaceX Changing the Rocket Equation?". Air & Space Smithsonian. Archived from the original on December 18, 2011. Retrieved 4 December 2017.
Significantly, the Merlin engines—like roughly 80 percent of the components for Falcon and Dragon, including even the flight computers—are made in-house. That’s something SpaceX didn’t originally set out to do, but was driven to by suppliers’ high prices. Mueller recalls asking a vendor for an estimate on a particular engine valve. 'They came back [requesting] like a year and a half in development and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Just way out of whack. And we’re like, ‘No, we need it by this summer, for much, much less money.’ They go, ‘Good luck with that,’ and kind of smirked and left.' Mueller’s people made the valve themselves, and by summer they had qualified it for use with cryogenic propellants. 'That vendor, they iced us for a couple of months,' Mueller says, 'and then they called us back: ‘Hey, we’re willing to do that valve. You guys want to talk about it?’ And we’re like, ‘No, we’re done.’ He goes, ‘What do you mean you’re done?’ ‘We qualified it. We’re done.’ And there was just silence at the end of the line. They were in shock.' That scenario has been repeated to the point where, Mueller says, 'we passionately avoid space vendors.
- ↑ 5.00 5.01 5.02 5.03 5.04 5.05 5.06 5.07 5.08 5.09 5.10 5.11 5.12 5.13 "Fire and fury: A pictorial history of SpaceX's spectacular launches and landings". newatlas.com. Retrieved 8 December 2017.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 6.9 "History of SpaceX: 10 milestones and hurdles the space company has faced". globalnews.ca. Retrieved 8 December 2017.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 "THE RISE AND RISE OF SPACEX". yaabot.com. Retrieved 4 December 2017.
- ↑ "NASA Awards Space Station Commercial Resupply Services Contracts". nasa.gov. Retrieved 6 December 2017.
- ↑ 9.00 9.01 9.02 9.03 9.04 9.05 9.06 9.07 9.08 9.09 9.10 9.11 9.12 9.13 9.14 9.15 "MAKING HISTORY". spacex.com. Retrieved 6 December 2017.
- ↑ "How SpaceX's First Space Station Cargo Mission Will Work". space.com. Retrieved 8 December 2017.
- ↑ "SpaceX Tests 'Revolutionary' Dragon Launch Escape System to Save Astronauts". space.com. Retrieved 6 December 2017.
- ↑ "SpaceX, In Another First, Recovers $6 Million Nose Cone From Reused Falcon 9". Fortune.com. Retrieved 4 December 2017.
- ↑ spacexcmsadmin (4 December 2017). "ZUMA MISSION".
