NASA’s new challenge? Grab a piece of Mars with SpaceX technology

Sebastian Stan and Mackenzie Davis visited the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where the actors met with their characters’ real-life counterparts, took a spin in a prototype rover and spoke with the astronauts aboard the international Space Station. This spacecraft is being developed under a contract with NASA probably worth $2.6 billion to ferry astronauts to and from the international Space Station, with the first flights expected to start by 2017. It was created independently from SpaceX by a NASA team. “But Dragon was also designed from the beginning to carry people, and today SpaceX is finalizing the necessary refinements to make that a reality”.

The future is here, or that’s how it seems while taking in the newly released images of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule.

The crew cabin, which has four windows, features seats made of carbon fibre and Alcantara cloth. It is not just pretty but it is highly functional with new emergency escape systems and rockets for propulsive landing.

The Falcon rocket itself will also undergo modifications, with the version heading to Mars in 2022 said to be much more capable than the current model.

Tesla’s Elon Musk is the CEO and founder of SpaceX, so though the new Crew Dragon spacecraft isn’t electric-powered, the technology and design are state of the art. SpaceX already had Dragon spacecraft bringing cargo to the ISS, but now the company has modified the interior for astronauts.

The specimen return exertion would hold expenses and multifaceted nature around utilizing SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket and an adjusted adaptation of the organization’s automated Dragon payload container, the idea’s designers say. Prior to SpaceX starts to fly operational missions to the orbiting outpost in the next two to three years, the company’s first Crew Dragon to fly with NASA astronauts aboard will follow the in-flight abort test.