Dragon is a
spacecraft developed by
SpaceX. During its maiden flight in December 2010, Dragon became the first commercially built and operated spacecraft to be recovered successfully from orbit. On May 25, 2012, a cargo variant of Dragon
became the first commercial spacecraft to successfully
rendezvous with and be attached to the
International Space Station (ISS). SpaceX is contracted to deliver cargo to the ISS under
NASA's
Commercial Resupply Services program, and Dragon began regular cargo flights in October 2012.
The spacecraft is currently launched atop a Falcon 9 Full Thrust rocket. Earlier missions, through SpaceX CRS-2, used the original Falcon 9 rocket. Dragon has been launched on seven missions, with one, SpaceX CRS-7, suffering a launch failure.
Dragon was renewed for the second round of the Commercial Resupply Services in 2016. It is also the basis for the Dragon V2 manned spacecraft, which was selected under the CCDev program in 2014 to deliver astronauts to the ISS.
Sergei Konstantinovich Krikalyov (
Russian: Сергей Константинович Крикалёв, born August 27, 1958) is a
Russian cosmonaut and
mechanical engineer. As a prominent
rocket scientist, he has been veteran of six space flights and currently has spent more time in space than any other human being. He transliterates his name in English as
Sergei Krikalev.
On August 16, 2005 at 1:44 a.m. EDT he passed the record of 748 days held by Sergei Avdeyev. He now has spent a total of 803 days and 9 hours and 39 minutes in space.
Krikalev was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russia. He enjoys swimming, skiing, cycling, aerobatic flying, and amateur radio operations, particularly from space (callsigns U5MIR and X75M1K).
On February 15, 2007, Krikalev was appointed Vice President of the S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia (Russian: Ракетно-космическая корпорация "Энергия" им. С.П.Королева) in charge of manned space flights.
Krikalev was dubbed by many "the last Citizen of the USSR " as in 1991–1992 he spent 311 days, 20 hours and 1 minute aboard the Mir space station while, back on Earth, the Soviet Union collapsed. A fictional account of how Krikalev may have felt about this is described in the song "Casiopea", written by Cuban songwriter Silvio Rodríguez.