NASA Was Completely Unprepared For What Happened When Manned SpaceX Returned To Earth

SpaceX pulled off a historic mission in 2020, cementing Elon Musk's place in the future of space exploration. Achieving a feat many years in the making, the SpaceX team sent astronauts into space and brought them back home safely. And while it was a landmark success, there was also a major unforeseen hiccup — that could have doomed the entire mission.

Looking To Mars

To understand the gravity of what SpaceX overlooked, it's important to know what it's trying to achieve. The company's long-term mission is to actualize the colonization of Mars. Keeping that goal in mind, SpaceX Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell said, “This is really just the beginning. We are starting the journey of bringing people regularly to and from low Earth orbit, then onto the moon, and then ultimately onto Mars.”

The Mission

But first, the mission was to launch a craft called SpaceX Demo-2, also called the Dragon, carrying two astronauts to the International Space Station. Given SpaceX’s status as a commercial company, the world was keeping an extra close eye on how successfully they’d pull this off. They had a lot to prove.

Pressure To Succeed

If all went well, SpaceX would get NASA Commercial Crew Program’s certification for the ability to complete further trips to the International Space Station in the future. Dragon had pulled off its first flight without any people on board. This time, astronauts were making the leap, so the stakes of ensuring their safety was an added layer of pressure.

The Astronauts

Astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert ‘Bob’ Behnken were chosen for the mission, tasked with seeing the Dragon spacecraft through each groundbreaking step of the process: the launch, landing successfully on the Space Station, and the most crucial, returning safely back to Earth.