Later that year, SpaceX received a $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract from NASA for 12 flights of its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station, replacing the Space Shuttle after its 2011 retirement.
In 2012, the Dragon vehicle docked with the ISS, a first for a commercial spacecraft.
Working towards its goal of reusable rockets, in 2015 SpaceX successfully landed the first stage of a Falcon 9 on an inland platform.
Later landings were achieved on autonomous spaceport drone ships, an ocean-based recovery platform.
In 2018, SpaceX launched the Falcon Heavy; the inaugural mission carried Musk's personal Tesla Roadster as a dummy payload.
In 2020, SpaceX launched its first crewed flight, the Demo-2, becoming the first private company to place astronauts into orbit and dock a crewed spacecraft with the ISS.
After the Space Shuttle was retired in 2011, SpaceX was awarded a $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract by NASA for 12 flights of its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station.
A commercial spacecraft docked with the ISS for the first time ever in 2012 with the Dragon vehicle.
Along with Jim Cantrell and Adeo Ressi, he went to Moscow in October of that year to purchase reconditioned intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that could launch the greenhouse payloads into space.
The team left with nothing because Musk was thought to be a novice. The team went back to Russia in February 2002 along with Mike Griffin, president of In-Q-Tel, to search for three ICBMs.
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