Dragon C1

Two days before launch, engineers found a 7.6 cm crack in the second-stage Merlin vacuum nozzle. SpaceX trimmed 38 cm from the nozzle extension and flew with NASA's approval. On 8 December 2010, a Falcon 9 lifted from Cape Canaveral carrying the first Dragon capsule — a conical spacecraft SpaceX had been developing under NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program.

Dragon C1 completed two orbits over 3 hours and 19 minutes, running thruster-maneuver tests before re-entering and splashing down in the Pacific Ocean about 800 km west of Baja California. Recovery craft arrived within 20 minutes of splashdown. The capsule was the first commercially built and operated spacecraft recovered from orbit.