Monday Sunrise Briefing: A new era in collaborative spaceflight

Two American astronauts returned to Earth Sunday in a déjà vu splashdown, the first in 45 years. This SpaceX-NASA mission marks the first commercially built and operated spacecraft to carry people to and from orbit. It’s another historic milestone on the road to a private-government space partnership. “We are entering a new era of human spaceflight, where NASA is no longer the purchaser, owner, and operator of all the hardware - we’re going to be a customer,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, “Driving down costs and increasing access to space.’

The promise is that space flight becomes like airline travel with regular commercial trips to low-earth orbit