Crew Dragon is, unsurprisingly, the module that is designed to carry passengers on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. It will allow NASA to send astronauts to the International Space Station and may well, in future, be used for other missions. SpaceX and NASA will use the data from these missions for hardware testing and the training of flight controllers and mission managers. The goal is to use the Crew Dragon and Boeing's Starliner for crewed missions to the International Space Station from the end of the year. Getting these crew-capable aircraft certified is important to NASA because it will allow it to move away from relying on Russia's Soyuz and allow crewed missions to land in the US.

Source: Daily Mirror February 07, 2019 16:19 UTC