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A successful start: The private space company SpaceX has embarked on its first official mission to the ISS. Other companies want to follow suit.
By Ute Spangenberger, SWR
“Crew-1”: that’s the name of SpaceX’s first official mission to the International Space Station. The launch should have taken place in late October, but NASA and SpaceX postponed it after problems with the Falcon 9 rocket motor. The rocket successfully lifted off Monday night.
The mission will have several premieres: For the first time since the US space shuttle program was suspended in 2011, an international crew will once again fly into space from US soil. The team consists of four members: three astronauts from NASA and one astronaut from the Japanese space agency JAXA. During the test flight in May, SpaceX only sent two NASA astronauts into space with the “Crew Dragon” space capsule.
A two-week quarantine for the astronauts began in late October. Its purpose is to ensure that the crew does not bring the coronavirus to the ISS. The SpaceX capsule was launched on a Falcon 9 launcher from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
There is also another premiere: the astronauts will stay in space for six months, that is, they will complete a long-term mission. Test pilots Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley were in space less than half the time on the first SpaceX flight in May.
american independence
NASA chief Jim Bridenstine speaks of the new mission as an important step in the history of space travel: “This mission is another decisive milestone in the development of our ability to launch American astronauts on American rockets from American soil, now in a sustainable way. “
That means the US would like to fly to the ISS regularly again and thus take advantage of the good old days. After NASA ended the space shuttle program in 2011 for cost reasons, they had to rely on the Russians and their Soyuz capsule. Planning for the future is already underway.
ESA astronauts will be there soon
In the spring of 2021, the second operational flight of SpaceX, an astronaut from the European Space Agency ESA will be on board: the Frenchman Thomas Pesquet. In July, ESA announced its participation.
“I am incredibly happy to be the first European to fly aboard the new generation of manned American spacecraft,” Pesquet said of the nomination. And ESA Director General Jan Wörner stressed that the international character of manned spaceflight would persist even if a commercial spacecraft built in the United States were used.
ESA German astronaut Matthias Maurer will be the second European after Pesquet to fly to the ISS. It’s still open when it starts and with whom.
Multiple transportation systems
So far, two providers, SpaceX and the Russian space agency Roskosmos, have been able to fly manned to the ISS with the Soyuz capsule. But soon the space capsule “Starliner” of the American company Boeing will be added. In 2014, NASA commissioned SpaceX and Boeing to develop transportation systems as part of the “Commercial Crew Program.”
To actually fly to the ISS, companies first had to demonstrate that they could dock to the ISS with unmanned capsules. This test flight failed at Boeing. It should recover in the next few months.
There are still question marks behind Boeing
ESA coordinator Thomas Reiter says we have to wait and see if Boeing’s next test flight is successful. If so, the Starliner capsule will have to conduct a manned test flight. Only then was he able to fly to the ISS as a matter of course: “It is not yet clear whether this will be successful in time for Matthias Maurer to be the first European to fly with Boeing.”
In the 20-year history of the ISS, three Germans have been on the space station so far: Thomas Reiter, Hans Schlegel, and twice Alexander Gerst.
ISS Crew Augmentation
So far, a European astronaut has flown to the ISS roughly every year and a half to two, Reiter explains. That should happen more often in the future, about once a year. The reason: in the SpaceX capsule four astronauts can be brought to the ISS at the same time, in the Soyuz capsule there was only room for three.
“This increases the number of permanent crew on board the ISS from six to seven,” acknowledges Reiter. And with this, the number of flight opportunities for ESA astronauts will automatically increase in the coming years. The ISS is jointly operated and funded by the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan, and the European Space Agency.
The current Crew 1 mission is scheduled to dock with the ISS tomorrow morning. Then the Americans would have made another stage on their way to greatness in space.
