The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, destined to complete the company’s first operational mission to the International Space Station (ISS) – designated Crew-1 – has been handed over to SpaceX processing facilities in Florida. As previously reported by Teslarati, the C207 capsule was in the final stages of packaging at the SpaceX plant in Hawthorne, CA in early August. Over the weekend, Capsule C207 completed the trek from California to Florida and arrived at SpaceX facilities at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Tuesday, August 18, according to a NASA Commerical Crew blog post.
Prior to shipment from California, capsule C207 was equipped with a trunk section with upgraded solar panels intended to extend the previous Crew Dragon limitation of ~ 120 days in orbit. The upgraded solar panels should extend the constraint and reduce the amount of degradation of solar cells that occurs while in orbit, allowing the Crew Dragon – and astronauts – to stay in orbit for as long as six months. ‘ the long-term requirements of NASA.
The capsule was also equipped with all the necessary hardware including the reintroduced heat shield, Super Draco emergency stop system for emergency stops, and parachute landing mechanisms before flying to Florida. The capsule will undergo definitive check outs and tests – such as acoustic testing – while at SpaceX’s Florida processing facilities before being paired with its Falcon 9 booster in SpaceX’s Horizontal integration facility at Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39-A.
The arrival of the astronaut capsule follows the delivery of a brand new Falcon 9 booster. The booster (B1061) made the move from SpaceX test grounds in McGregor, Texas back in July before arriving at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Before shipping, the booster successfully passed a static fire acceptor test of its nine Merlin 1D engines on a test stand at the Mcgregor facility.
In the blog post, NASA also announced that the Falcon 9’s second stage delay with one Merlin Vacuum engine will also continue with accepting test fire at the McGregor facility on Tuesday, August 18th. The second-stage MVac engine was previously successfully statically fired back in April as confirmed on the company’s Twitter account. The recently tested test completed second stage is expected to ship to Florida in the coming weeks. The arrival of the second stage will mark the delivery of all SpaceX Crew-1 flight hardware.
The Crew-1 Crew Dragon capsule will fly three NASA astronauts, Commander Michael Hopkins, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialist Shannon Walker, as well as mission specialist Soichi Noguchi of the Japanese space program JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to the ISS and safely return them home for a splashdown landing.
NASA and SpaceX are currently not previously targeted on October 23 for the launch of Crew-1. As previously reported by Teslarati, the launch date of late October is a slip of a few weeks from the previously identified no earlier than late-September timeline. The extra time is likely to be a result of necessary testing and time required for NASA to complete the operational status certification of SpaceX’s human spaceflight system.
Check out Teslarati’s newsletters for quick updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket launch and recovery processes.
