SpaceX chief Elon Musk mentioned on Thursday (June 5, 2025) he would start “decommissioning” his firm’s Dragon spacecraft — important for ferrying NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station — after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to terminate his authorities contracts.
“In light of the President’s statement about cancellation of my government contracts, @SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately,” Mr. Musk wrote on X.
The feedback — which the mercurial billionaire later appeared to stroll again — got here after Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk’s almost year-long political alliance imploded in spectacular vogue, with the 2 buying and selling public insults on social media.
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SpaceX’s Crew Dragon — a gumdrop-shaped capsule that flies atop a Falcon 9 rocket and splashes down within the ocean — is at present the one US spacecraft licensed to hold crew to the ISS below a contract value greater than $4.9 billion.
A variant, Cargo Dragon, delivers provides, because the identify suggests.
Following Musk’s announcement, NASA spokeswoman Bethany Stevens mentioned on X that the federal government house company would “continue to execute upon the President’s vision for the future of space.”
“We will continue to work with our industry partners to ensure the President’s objectives in space are met,” she mentioned.
NASA had hoped to certify Boeing’s Starliner for crewed missions, however that program has confronted extreme delays.
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Its most up-to-date check flight final yr led to failure after the spacecraft skilled propulsion points en path to the orbital lab with its first astronaut crew.
The Starliner finally returned to Earth empty, whereas the 2 astronauts have been introduced house by SpaceX earlier this yr.
Crew Dragon’s certification in 2020 ended almost a decade of US reliance on Russian Soyuz rockets to move astronauts following the retirement of the Space Shuttle program in 2011.
American astronauts nonetheless fly aboard Soyuz rockets, whereas Russian cosmonauts journey on Crew Dragons below a longstanding seat-swap settlement.
In addition to NASA missions, Crew Dragon additionally flies non-public missions — most just lately Fram2, which carried vacationers over the Earth’s poles.
The subsequent scheduled crew launch is Tuesday’s Axiom-4 mission, which will see a Crew Dragon transport astronauts from India, Poland, and Hungary to the ISS.
Published – June 06, 2025 08:50 am IST
