May 6, 2021 The pandemic, along with its impact on the global economy and our lifestyles, has not halted the everlasting aspiration we have to explore unknown territories outside our atmosphere. On May 2, SpaceX, the spaceflight company owned by business magnate Elon Musk, safely returned four astronauts to Earth, making the first United States crew splashdown in darkness since the Apollo 8 moonshot in 1968, according to the Associated Press. “After 167 days in space, the longest duration mission for a U.S. spacecraft since the final Skylab mission in 1974,” reads a tweet by SpaceX’s official account, “Dragon and the Crew-1 astronauts … returned to Earth this morning!” According to a report by Quilty Analytics, NASA awarded SpaceX with $1.75 billion to develop Crew Dragon.