The commercially built and operated spacecraft, known as the SpaceX Crew Dragon, carried astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley into space to the International Space Station as part of Nasa's Commercial Crew Program, where they will be capable of staying for at least 210 days, as per Nasa requirements.

The Dragon’s minimal interior and exterior design sports fully automated touchscreens and clean lines rather than dated switches and knobs and can seat up to four passengers—although only the centre two seats were occupied for the preliminary test flight.

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“This is a dream come true for me and everyone at SpaceX,” said Elon Musk, chief engineer at SpaceX in a statement. “It is the culmination of an incredible amount of work by the SpaceX team, by Nasa and by a number of other partners in the process of making this happen. You can look at this as the results of a hundred thousand people roughly when you add up all the suppliers and everyone working incredibly hard to make this day happen.”

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This will be available to travellers soon too, as SpaceX plans to launch tourists into space as soon as 2021. SpaceX has officially signed a deal with space tourism company, Space Adventures, and will move forward with planning a trip orbiting the Earth for just four adventurous travellers.