NASA Announces Launch Date for SpaceX’s Dragon to the ISS

According to NASASpaceFlight.Com, NASA has announced that, pending final safety checks, a SpaceX unmanned Dragon spacecraft will fly to the International Space Station on Feb. 7 to test procedures for rendezvous and berthing.

What is the SpaceX Dragon?

According to SpaceX, the Dragon is a capsule consisting of a protective nosecone, the main spacecraft that would carry either passengers and crew or pressurized cargo as well as avionics, the RCS system, parachutes, and other support infrastructure, and the trunk, carrying unpressurized cargo, solar arrays, and thermal radiators. It is capable of automatic rendezvous and docking with a manual override when carrying a crew. The Dragon can carry 13,228 pounds to low Earth orbit and 6,614 pounds from LEO back to Earth. In the crew configuration it can carry up to seven people.

What is the flight profile of the planned February test?

The Dragon will fly by the International Space Station in order to test sensors and flight systems as well as abort procedures. Then the Dragon will make a final approach to the ISS and will be captured by the station’s remote manipulator arm and berthed at the Harmony node module facing the Earth. Cargo carried by the Dragon will be transferred to the ISS. Then the manipulator arm will detach the Dragon, which will fly back to Earth and splash down in the Pacific Ocean just off the coast of California.

What happens next?

If there are any failures in the test flight, a new flight is budgeted so that the Dragon can go through the rendezvous and berthing procedures again. Once the test flight is successfully completed, the unmanned version of the Dragon will begin operational flights, carrying cargo to the ISS.

The prospects of the development of the manned version of the Dragon are a bit murkier. Congress has slashed the president’s request funding of commercial crew development by over 50 percent for the current fiscal year. Also there are serious questions of how much direct control NASA will have in the development of a crewed version of spacecraft like the Dragon. Commercial crew advocates such as the Space Access Society complain that NASA’s plans to direct development of spacecraft such as the Dragon would add a significant amount of cost. NASA’s position is that it must do it this way in order to ensure astronaut safety.

What is the bottom line?

The Obama administration has gone all in on commercial crew for the future of American space flight to low Earth orbit. Any delays, because of unforeseen technical issues or because of NASA’s insistence at exercising control of spacecraft development, will lengthen the time in which Americans are dependent on Russia to travel into space.

Mark R. Whittington is the author of Children of Apollo and The Last Moonwalker . He has written on space subjects for a variety of periodicals, including The Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post, USA Today, the LA Times, and The Weekly Standard.


People also view

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *