JAKARTA - SpaceX will reportedly stop producing the new Crew Dragon spacecraft, after it finishes producing its fourth and final capsule.
Crew Dragon is a spacecraft used by the company to carry humans to and from the International Space Station (ISS).
Now, billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX will continue to manufacture components for the spacecraft and will retain its capacity to manufacture additional Crew Dragon capsules should something happen.
"We're working on our final (capsule), but we're still building components, because we'll be updating," SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell told Reuters.
Each Crew Dragon flight, the spacecraft must go through a repair process in Florida, United States (US), where certain hardware is changed or swapped to make the vehicle ready to fly again.
Given that Crew Dragon is designed for reuse, it's always been assumed that SpaceX will produce a limited number of spacecraft, but it's unknown how many capsules the company plans to build before moving on to other projects.
Initially, SpaceX developed Crew Dragon for NASA's Commercial Crew Program, which spurred the creation of private vehicles to transport astronauts back and forth from the ISS.
As part of that program, SpaceX has launched a crew of four NASA astronauts to the ISS aboard the Crew Dragon. In September last year alone, the company launched its first fully private crew, bringing four civilian astronauts into Earth orbit for a three-day trip.
The company has many future trips planned for its four Crew Dragons, each of which has been named by their first crew of astronauts, Endeavor, Resilience, Endurance, and Freedom.
Even in the near future, a commercial space station company called Axiom will launch four private astronauts with Crew Dragon to the ISS for a 10-day trip.
Axiom holds a contract with SpaceX to launch three additional human missions to the ISS on Crew Dragon following this first mission. However, SpaceX still holds a contract with NASA to launch crews to the ISS every six months and then take them home.
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