Elon Musk announced on June 5 that SpaceX would begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft after President Donald Trump appeared to call for the termination of all of the government’s subsidies and contracts with him.
SpaceX Dragon crew and cargo capsules have been the backbone of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) spacefaring efforts for several years, operating the first cargo mission to the International Space Station in 2012, and launching its first crewed mission in 2020.
The company has taken up residence at Kennedy Space Center’s historic Launch Complex 39A, which is adding a launch tower for the behemoth Starship, and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Launch Complex 40 in Florida.
SpaceX has also been contracted to provide one of the lunar landers for NASA’s Artemis program to return human beings to the moon, and it was set to develop the spacecraft that would strategically deorbit the International Space Station by 2030.
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, at this time, remains America’s only means of human spaceflight.
Although Boeing has tried to add a second option, complete termination of the SpaceX/NASA commercial crew partnership could mean an immediate loss of consistent American human spaceflight capabilities, following the end of the Space Shuttle Program.
Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner performed one test flight to the space station in 2024, but failed to bring its crew back due to technical issues discovered midflight. Those astronauts had to rely on a Crew Dragon capsule to bring them home.
While the Starliner is still scheduled to carry the 12th crew of NASA’s commercial crew program to the space station, it is unclear if the spacecraft will be ready to fly again in time.
NASA also has a crewed capsule in the works called Orion, but it has been designed specifically for the Artemis moonshot missions and has yet to have a crewed test flight.
Jeff Bezos’s space company, Blue Origin, is also working to provide passenger services to low earth orbit, but its New Glenn rocket is only just starting to fly missions this year, and its crew capabilities remain limited to suborbital hops across the Karman Line on the New Shepherd rockets in west Texas.
SpaceX’s relationship with the U.S. government is not limited to civilian work with NASA.
“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” Trump said on Truth Social. “I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”
In the meantime, SpaceX continues to operate private missions. Its next launch of a Dragon Crew capsule, which is slated for the morning of June 10, will carry the privatized Axiom 4 mission to the International Space Station from Kennedy Space Center.
