SpaceX Launches First Test Flight of Dragon Crew Capsule

SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft built to bring humans to orbit took flight for the first time Wednesday.
Dragon roared to life at about 9 a.m. EDT Wednesday for its short, uncrewed test in Florida. The seemingly successful test marks a big milestone on SpaceX’s road to ferrying NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station in the next two years.
Even though Dragon was in the air for less than two minutes, the test should help SpaceX engineers gather key information about a potentially life-saving part of the spaceflight system.
SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket company based in California, wanted to see to see how the spaceflight system’s launch escape behaved during its first real test. Dragon’s abort system is designed to propel the capsule — and any astronauts on board — to safety in case the rocket experiences major a problem during flight.