In June 2009, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk stated that the company planned to conduct the maiden flight of the Dragon spacecraft in 2009, and have the capsule enter service in 2010, before the scheduled final flight of the Space Shuttle.[8]
On February 23, 2009, SpaceX announced that its chosen heat shield material, PICA-X, a proprietary variant of NASA's phenolic impregnated carbon ablator material, had passed heat stress tests in preparation for the first Dragon launch.[9] In 2010 SpaceX's Elon Musk stated that the "Dragon is capable of re-entering from a Lunar velocity, or even a Mars velocity with the heat shield that it has."[10]
The first flight of a stripped down version of the Dragon capsule occurred in June 2010 on the Falcon 9's maiden flight. This Dragon Spacecraft Qualification Unit was originally used as a non-flying test bed to validate several of the capsule's systems. At first flight, its primary mission was to relay aerodynamic data captured during the ascent.[11][12] The Dragon spacecraft itself first flew on December 8, 2010, during the second flight of the Falcon 9.[1
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Subject: In June 2009, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk 
Sat Dec 11, 2010 7:59 pm
