SpaceX Crew-1: What to expect from the launch from ISS

On the evening of November 14, SpaceX plans to recreate the commemorative feat achieved earlier this year by launching another crew of astronauts on the International Space Station. The mission is a milestone for both SpaceX and NASA. It is the first “operational” crew flight for the company and a step towards launching the American astronaut relatively regularly.

Named Crew-1, the flight will send a total of four astronauts to the International Space Station on SpaceX’s new Crew Dragon spacecraft, a capsule designed to launch on top of the company’s Falcon 9 rocket. Three of the passengers are NASA astronauts – Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Waker – and the fourth is an astronaut with the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, Sochi Noguchi. The quartet will already join three additional crew members on the ISS, staying for six months before leaving in the spring of 2021.

The number of crew dragons doubled in May, when two NASA astronauts – Bob Behankan and Doug Hurley – were on the vehicle’s first crew flight. While that goal was much beaten, SpaceX is now set in a more or less regular flight pattern with crew dragons, sending groups of four astronauts to and from NASA every six months from the International Space Station. That’s exactly what Crew Dragon developed for NASA’s commercial crew program: to serve as a private space taxi for NASA astronauts to get to the ISS.

Here’s what you need to know about the lead-up to this mission, what to expect during SpaceX’s crew dragon’s first operational flight, and how things will turn out in the years to come.

Background

The crew-1 arrived on May 31, more than five months after SpaceX’s historic flight that took Behankan and Hurley to the space station. This mission marks the first time that a private company has sent humans into orbit. It was also the first time since the end of the space shuttle program in 2011 that astronauts began orbiting American soil. For almost a decade, NASA astronauts had to rely on Russian rockets to get to and from the space station. Kazakhstan. When SpaceX’s crew teamed up with Dragons, Florida’s Cape Canaveral, Behnken, and Hurley, it effectively bridged the gap between U.S. manned spaceflight.

SpaceX’s May flight was a test to demonstrate the crew dragon’s abilities, before it regularly began manned flights to the space station. After perforating that flight data, NASA has certified that Crew Dragon is indeed ready for a regular human spaceflight, the first time the agency has certified a private crew vehicle. “We are proud to take seriously the country’s launcher for the crude mission and NASA has assigned us American astronauts to go to the space station,” said Benji Reed, senior director of human astronaut programs at SpaceX. Press conference.

Lessons learned

Based on what SpaceX learned from Behankan and Hurley’s missions, the crew dragon needed a few tweaks. Perhaps the biggest change came in the spacecraft’s heat shield, the main piece of hardware that keeps the vehicle from overheating as it takes care of the Earth’s atmosphere. SpaceX found that when the crew returned to Dragon August Gust, some of the tiles in the Heat Shield moved more than the company expected.

SpaceX claims that the crew had no fear of erosion, but the company chose to redesign part of the heat shield tiles, testing it ahead of the mission. The company says it has “nothing to worry about”. “The astronauts were safe at all times and the vehicle was fully operational,” Hans Koenigsman, vice president of spaceX’s build and flight reliability, told a news conference in October. “So this is something we just found in observation … and decided, ‘Well, we should probably strengthen the heat shield in this particular area.’

Photo by Bill Ingles / NASA

The crew dragon’s parachutes also behaved differently than expected on the previous flight, an update will ask. To gently sink into the ocean, the spacecraft arranges a series of parachutes to slow itself down. It deploys at a slightly lower itude level than planned huts. SpaceX has since changed so that the Crew Dragon measures the outside pressure of the air to better determine when the spacecraft is located on the right side of the atmosphere.

The final change SpaceX and NASA revolved around not the vehicle design but the process. When the crew Dragon was swept off the coast of Pensacola in August Gust, the vehicle was met by a crowd of recreational boats eager to see the spacecraft up close. The sight of boats buzzing around and around the capsule created an atmosphere of immediate concern – for both the astronauts on board as well as the boats themselves. The crew uses dragon propellants and fuels that come too close to humans and can be toxic if they are not careful.

To prevent a recurring scene, SpaceX and NASA say they have launched a U.S. mission. Together with the Coastguard the Land Crew has worked to create a 10-mile keep-out zone around the Dragon so that no unauthorized visitors get close to the vehicle in the water. “We want to get more boats going forward and make sure the area is really clear from anyone else. [civilian] Boat, ”Koenigsman said.

Launch and docking

Putting all these changes in place, the Crew-1 launch should look the same as the one starting in May – although this will happen overnight. The spacecraft will take off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on top of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, at 7:49 p.m.

After being dressed in SpaceX’s signature white-and-gray press costumes, the four astronauts will travel to the launchpad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center inside two branded white Tesla Model Dell Xs. Once out of the car, they will take an elevator to the top of the rocket and proceed through a closed hall to enter the crew dragon at the top of the Falcon 9. The SpaceX team will then have four of them seated in their seats. As they wait for the launch.

Photo by Joel Cosky / NASA

There is a quick orbital trip for the crew dragon – just 12 minutes after takeoff. The crew will then spend about eight and a half hours in orbit, arrive at the International Space Station and docking at about 4:20 AM ET. It is a much faster journey than the Behankan and Hurley missions, which took about 19 hours to reach the ISS.

Designed to dock autonomously with the space station, the crew dragon will slowly reach its destination in space and use a range of sensors and cameras to place itself on an open docking port. Once connected, the Leachs will secure the crew dragon in place, and the crew-1 will begin a six-month stay on the ISS board.

The four-person team will be joined by three people already living on the ISS: Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryazikov and Sergei Kud-Sverkov and NASA astronaut Kate Rubins. This will be the first time seven people will live and work together on the ISS, as crews have typically topped six people in the last 10 years. While the space station has enough space for an additional crew member, the vehicle is actually a short “crew quarters” or a place for astronauts to sleep. Astronaut Michael Hopkins said NASA hopes to send another spacecraft for boarding while they were sitting in the ISS, but in the meantime, it will probably sleep on the crew dragon board.

Keep time

With any projection, there is always the risk of delay. In fact, the mission was scheduled for October 31, but NASA postponed the flight this week after SpaceX found some irregularities in the main engine of its Falcon 9 rocket. To address this issue, the company had to rotate the two engines used in the Falcon 9 for this flight.

Going forward, the biggest threat to a timely launch could be the weather. This week, all eyes were on Tropical Storm Eta, currently passing through Florida. The storm now seems to be moving north of the launch site and should clear the state on Thursday.

Photo by Joel Cosky / NASA

However, the weather is always worrying, especially with these passenger flights to the station. SpaceX’s crew dragon capsule has the ability to perform abortions during flight, detaching from the rocket and parachuting into the sea to save crew members if something goes wrong. This means that flight controllers will monitor the weather in most parts of the Atlantic Ocean to make sure doing Happens, the crew does not spray down into the sea of ​​dragon books.

For now, the weather seems to be cooperating, as there is a 60 percent chance of favorable conditions. This weekend everyone is focused on the projection coming off the ground. NASA’s live coverage will begin at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, following everything from launching to docking to the crew members’ reception on Sunday morning. If the Falcon 9 rocket can land on schedule, it will be a whirlwind trip this week.