SpaceX Dragon

Dragon is a family of spacecraft developed and produced by American private space transportation company SpaceX.

The first variant, later named Dragon 1, flew 23 cargo missions to the International Space Station (ISS) between 2010 and 2020 before retiring. Design of this version, not designed to carry astronauts, was funded by NASA with $396 million awarded through the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program and contracted to ferry cargo under the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) program.

An improved version, the Dragon 2, was introduced in 2019 and has both crewed and cargo versions. The first un-crewed flight test (Demo-1) took place in March 2019, followed by a crewed flight test (Demo-2) in May 2020. Since those flight tests, the Crew Dragon has become one of the primary spacecraft ferrying crew to and from the ISS. While the Cargo Dragon continues to carry cargo under the CSS program.

SpaceX has also proposed versions named Red Dragon for Mars exploration and Dragon XL to provide Gateway Logistics Services to the Lunar Gateway.