Concept
Dragon 2 is a class of partially reusable spacecraft developed and manufactured by American aerospace manufacturer SpaceX, primarily for flights to the International Space Station (ISS). SpaceX also launches private missions, such as Inspiration4 and Axiom Mission 1. There are two variants of the Dragon spacecraft: Crew Dragon, a spacecraft capable of ferrying four crewmembers, and Cargo Dragon, an updated replacement for the original Dragon 1 used to carry freight to and from space. The spacecraft consists of a reusable space capsule and an expendable trunk module. The spacecraft launches atop a Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket and the capsule returns to Earth through splashdown. Cargo Dragon supplies cargo to the ISS under a Commercial Resupply Services-2 contract with NASA. The first flight of Dragon 2 in a cargo configuration launched in December 2020. It shares this duty with Northrop Grumman's Cygnus spacecraft, and Sierra Nevada Corporation's Dream Chaser spaceplane is expected to join them . As of July 2023 it is the only reusable orbital cargo spacecraft in operation. As of July 2023, Crew Dragon is the only U.S. human-rated orbital transport spacecraft. Crew Dragon's primary role is to transport crews to and from the ISS under NASA's Commercial Crew Program, succeeding the crew orbital transportation capabilities of the Space Shuttle, which retired from service in 2011. It will be joined by Boeing Starliner in this role . Crew Dragon is also used for commercial flights, some of them to the ISS, and is expected to be used to shuttle people to and from Axiom Space's planned space station. There are two variants of Dragon 2: Crew Dragon and Cargo Dragon. Crew Dragon was initially called "DragonRider" and it was intended from the beginning to support a crew of seven or a combination of crew and cargo. Earlier spacecraft had a berthing port and were berthed to ISS by ISS personnel. Dragon 2 instead has an IDSS-compatible docking port to dock to the International Docking Adapter ports on ISS.
