SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft successfully docked autonomously with the International Space Station this weekend. While there were no astronauts on board this time—just a sensor-laden dummy affectionately named Ripley—this is a massive leap forward.



Since the retirement of the Space Shuttle programme back in 2011, the US has relied entirely on Russian Soyuz rockets to reach the station. Seeing a new, sleek, next-generation capsule arrive at the ISS is incredibly exciting. It paves the way for returning human spaceflight launch capabilities to American soil very soon.