WASHINGTON – NASA and SpaceX are set to complete a test flight of the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, but bad weather could delay the return of the spacecraft and its two-person crew.
A “return flight readiness review” conducted on July 29 by NASA approved plans to conclude the Demo-2 test flight and bring NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to Earth, just over two months after its launch to the International Space Station.
The earliest possible decoupling of the Crew Dragon is around 7:35 p.m. on August 1 eastern, causing a splash on the Florida coast at 2:48 p.m. on August 2 eastern, Steve Stich said, manager of NASA’s commercial crew program, on a briefing after the review.
That schedule assumes that weather conditions will be favorable for a landing. However, Tropical Storm Isaias is forecast to hit Florida on August 2. While it is not forecast to become a hurricane, its winds and rain could postpone a landing.
Even without a threatening tropical storm, NASA said they will have to keep a close eye on weather conditions given the strict limits for this test flight. “The one that may be the most challenging is the wind,” Stich said, with a limit of about 10 miles per hour. “This is to protect how the vehicle lands in the water and how the water will rise and surround the vehicle at the time of landing.”
There are also limits to the state of the sea, including the height and period of the waves, as well as the rainfall. Stich said the goal is to have an acceptable weather forecast for at least two of the seven splash locations before proceeding with decoupling. Once Crew Dragon undocks, it has enough supplies to stay in orbit for three days.
If the weather postpones the first landing opportunity, Stich said the next opportunity to undock would be on August 3. “We will take advantage of it day by day,” he said. “We will assess the weather every day and see how the weather develops.”
The decoupling and splashing will conclude a mission that both NASA and SpaceX said they were satisfied to date. The Crew Dragon launched in a Falcon on May 9, 30 and docked with the ISS the next day. While at the station, engineers have been monitoring its performance and conducting various tests, including one in which four crew members boarded the capsule to see how it works with a full complement of crew.
“The systems in Dragon are working very well. The spacecraft is very healthy, “said Stich. That included an inspection of the spacecraft last weekend by the station’s robotic arm, which saw no evidence of any damage or other issues that could pose a problem for the upcoming return.
Once the spacecraft returns, NASA and SpaceX will inspect the spacecraft and review the data as part of a process that will culminate in formal NASA certification of the spacecraft for operational flights. “Going through that process, leading to certification, takes about six weeks,” Stich said.
That certification will allow that first operational mission, Crew-1, to proceed with a launch scheduled for the end of September. The Crew Dragon spacecraft that will fly that mission is nearing completion at the SpaceX factory in Hawthorne, California, and will be dispatched to Florida in early August, said Benji Reed, director of crew mission management at SpaceX.
The Demo-2 capsule will be restored for use in the Crew-2 mission, which will launch in the spring of 2021. NASA announced the crew for that mission on July 28, which includes NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur along with Akihiko Hoshide from the Japanese space agency JAXA and Thomas Pesquet from the European Space Agency.
Reed said restoring the Crew Dragon should be a “very quick process” that can be done at a Florida facility, with the pod ready for its next mission in a couple of months. Each Crew Dragon spacecraft is designed for at least five flights.
SpaceX obtained approval from NASA in May to begin reusing both the Crew Dragon spacecraft and the early stages of the Falcon 9 rockets on commercial crew missions, starting with Crew-2. The company originally proposed to fly a new spacecraft on each NASA mission.
“We have continued for the past several years demonstrating the genius of reuse and ebb, and the importance of it,” Reed said of the decision to reuse the Crew Dragon spacecraft, noting its benefits not only in economy but also in safety and reliability. . “We were always ready to do it, and it was always part of the plan.”
