A senior SpaceX director shared a photo of the next Crew Dragon spacecraft assigned to launch NASA astronauts and confirmed that the vehicle is almost ready to send to Florida.
At the bottom of SpaceX’s Hawthorne, California rocket factory, the Crew Dragon capsule, believed to be C207, assigned to the company’s astronaut launch operational debut (Crew-1) is in the later stages of the final integration. A photo provided along with the news confirms that the Dragon of the crew is almost complete. In addition to installing body panels and various other tasks to be completed once the ship arrives in Florida, the C207 capsule is already fully equipped with a heat shield, windows, Draco maneuver thrusters, SuperDraco abort thrusters, hardware from parachute deployment and much more.
According to Benji Reed, Director of SpaceX Crew Mission Management, the SpaceX Crew Crew operational astronaut launch debut is still on track to launch before the end of September. The C207 Capsule and its upgraded trunk section are reportedly on track to head from California to SpaceX’s launch facility in Florida in time to support that schedule and could be shipped east within two or more weeks from now. .
The only major (known) difference between SpaceX’s new Crew Dragon and the spacecraft (C206) currently in orbit is the inclusion of improved solar panels in the ship’s expendable trunk section.
Indeed, an aerodynamic cover and a mounting adapter for the capsule, the aft trunk also houses radiators for thermal management and a unique conformal solar array to supply power to the spacecraft while in orbit. Crew Dragon is unlikely to ever use it, but the trunk also serves as a pressureless charging accessory. That will allow Cargo Dragon 2 (based on Crew Dragon) to transport much larger external charges to the International Space Station (ISS) once it launches later this year. Before its retirement in April 2020, the original Cargo Dragon spacecraft used a similar trunk section to deliver unpressurized cargo to the ISS more than a dozen times.
According to several comments made by NASA and SpaceX in recent months, the only known limit for the first private spacecraft in history to launch astronauts into orbit (Crew Dragon C201) is the solar cells in its trunk. Apparently discovered during a combination of ground tests and Crew Dragon’s demo-1 launch debut, the current version of the trunk undergoes gradual degradation of the solar cells while in orbit, slowly reducing the amount of energy that can be produced by the solar matrix. Eventually, the output power could degrade to the point that Crew Dragon would no longer be able to effectively charge its battery, a catastrophic failure if the astronauts were on board and the spacecraft flew freely.
The amount of time SpaceX’s Demo-2 Crew Dragon spacecraft can actually orbit was limited ~ 120 days by that degradation of the solar cells. In a nominal operational astronaut launch, Crew Dragon must spend at least half a year (~ 180 days) docked on the ISS. Originally, Demo-2 was expected to last only a few days or weeks at most, so the deficit was of minimal concern, but it inherently implied that a stronger solar array was inevitable and was just around the corner.
Once the Crew Dragon C207 capsule hits Florida, it will bind to the Falcon 9 B1061 booster and will likely bind to the upper stage and trunk section soon after. First, however, SpaceX needs to safely return the Crew Dragon C206 and NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to Earth before it can launch Crew-1. As of now, the spacecraft is scheduled to exit the ISS starting at 7:34 pm EDT (00:34 UTC) on August 1, followed by re-entry and splashing approximately 18 hours later.
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