Fwd: Dragon Capsule to Return to Earth after Delay

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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: March 26, 2013 6:06:38 PM GMT-06:00
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Dragon Capsule to Return to Earth after Delay

 

SpaceX Dragon Capsule to Return to Earth after Delay

SpaceX Dragon

© NASA

05:24 26/03/2013

 

MOSCOW, March 26 (RIA Novosti) - About three weeks after arriving at the International Space Station, the Dragon spacecraft built by the Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) will return to Earth on Tuesday.

Dragon's return date, originally scheduled for March 25, was postponed due to bad weather near its targeted splashdown site in the Pacific Ocean.

A Falcon 9 rocket with the Dragon spacecraft blasted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on March 1. The docking with the space station was performed on March 3, one day later than scheduled due to a thruster failure.

The Dragon brought some 550 kilograms (1,212 pounds) of cargo to the ISS, and will take back to Earth over 1 metric ton of load.

It was the second of at least 12 flights to the ISS that US private company SpaceX carried out under its $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract.

Last year, the Dragon made a demonstration flight to the space station in May and carried out the first resupply mission in October, delivering more than 450 kg (1,000 pounds) of cargo to the ISS.

© RIA Novosti.

Falcon 9 and Dragon

 

Dragon's third mission to the space station is expected in the fall of 2013. The spacecraft will be launched on board a modernized version of the Falcon 9 rocket.

The Dragon is a reusable spacecraft developed by SpaceX to fly cargo to the ISS after NASA retired its space shuttle fleet last year. The spacecraft is capable of carrying more than 7,000 pounds (3,175 kg) of cargo split between pressurized and unpressurized sections, according to NASA.

 

© 2013 RIA Novosti

 

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      Mar. 26, 2013 7:17 AM,   

SpaceX's Dragon capsule on way back to Earth

SpaceX Dragon spacecraft headed back to Earth: SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft has released from the International Space Station and is headed back to Earth.

Written by
Todd Halvorson
FLORIDA TODAY

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The SpaceX Dragon capsule is released by the robotic arm attached to the International Space Station. / NASA TV

CAPE CANAVERAL – A cargo-carrying SpaceX capsule is headed for a Pacific Ocean splashdown today after a soaring send-off from the International Space Station.

With the Dragon spacecraft secured on the end of the station's 57-foot robotic arm, outpost commander Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency and U.S. astronaut Thomas Marshburn deployed the capsule at 6:56 a.m. EDT.

The two triggered the release from a control station in the complex's Cupola, a seven-window observation deck. The space station and the Dragon were flying about 252 miles above the southwest coast of Australia at the time.

"There goes Dragon away from the arm," said NASA mission commentator Josh Byerly.

"Looks both beautiful and nominal from here," Hadfield told engineers in the NASA Mission Control Center in Houston.

SpaceX flight controllers executed a series of three thruster firings, pushing the Dragon out of the station's immediate vicinity and onto a trajectory designed to lead to an 11:42 a.m. atmospheric re-entry.

Hadfield said the capsule's course was "rock solid."

SpaceX ships and recovery personnel are in place 214 miles off the coast of Baja California. The Dragon is scheduled to make a parachute-assisted splashdown at 12:34 p.m. EDT. The return had been scheduled for Monday but rough seas prompted a one-day delay.

The SpaceX fleet includes a 185-foot barge equipped with cranes to lift the spacecraft onto the vessel. A smaller crew boat carries engineers and a dive team. Two rigid-hull inflatable boats round out the fleet.

Launched March 1 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the Dragon reached the station two days later with more than a ton of supplies and equipment.

The capsule is returning to Earth with 2,668 pounds of experiment equipment and science samples.

SpaceX Dragon capsules are the only spacecraft capable of returning large amounts of cargo to Earth now that the U.S. shuttle fleet is retired. Other station resupply ships are filled with trash and deliberately incinerated during atmospheric reentry.

The Dragon should be returned to the Port of Los Angeles on Wednesday.

On Thursday, U.S. astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin are scheduled to blast off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Their six-hour flight to the outpost will mark the first same-day launch-to-docking at the International Space Station. Two-day trips have been the norm since the first expedition crew opened the orbiting laboratory complex in November 2000.

The three-man crew already onboard also includes Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko.

 

Contact Halvorson at thalvorson@floridatoday.com

 

Copyright © 2013 www.floridatoday.com. All rights reserved. 

 

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SpaceX Dragon cargo ship leaves space station

By MARCIA DUNN | Associated Press 

View Photo

Associated Press/NASA - This image provided by NASA-TV shows the SpaceX Dragon commercial cargo craft as it is backed away from the International Space Station early Tuesday March 26, 2013 by the International …more 

 

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A privately owned cargo ship left the International Space Station with a full science load Tuesday and aimed for a splashdown in the Pacific.

Astronauts released the unmanned SpaceX capsule, named Dragon, from the end of the space station's giant robot arm. The parting occurred 250 miles over the South Pacific and was a poignant moment for the three space station residents, who had helped to snare the Dragon three weeks earlier.

"Sad to see the Dragon go," astronaut Thomas Marshburn told Mission Control. "Performed her job beautifully. Heading back to her lair. Wish her all the best for the splashdown today."

The Dragon was due to splash down off the Baja California coast 5½ hours after its space station departure. It will be transported by ship to Los Angeles and then by truck to the SpaceX company's plant in McGregor, Texas.

Within hours, NASA will retrieve the science samples meticulously collected over the weeks and months by space station astronauts, as well as experiments that flew up with Dragon, such as flowering weeds and mouse stem cells. Old space station equipment and other items will be removed by SpaceX in McGregor. In all, more than 1 ton of gear was loaded into the capsule.

Dragon's return to Earth was delayed one day by bad weather in the splashdown zone.

The California-based SpaceX company launched the Dragon from Cape Canaveral, Fla., at the beginning of March. Mechanical trouble caused a one-day postponement in Dragon's arrival at the space station. SpaceX flight controllers at company headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif., managed to fix the problem within hours.

SpaceX — Space Exploration Technologies Corp. — is run by billionaire Elon Musk, who made his fortune as a co-creator of PayPal. He also owns the electric car maker Tesla Motors.

NASA is paying SpaceX to resupply the space station. This was the second flight of a Dragon to the orbiting outpost under the $1.6 billion contract, and the third delivery mission altogether for SpaceX. The next flight is slated for late fall.

A competitor, Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., plans a test flight of its Antares rocket and a dummy payload next month. That launch will be conducted from Wallops Island, Va.

Russia, Japan and Europe also periodically send up supplies, but SpaceX has the only craft capable of returning goods. All the others burn up upon re-entry.

Three astronauts are aboard the space station right now. They will be joined by three more following Thursday's Soyuz launch from Kazakhstan.

With its space shuttles now museum pieces, NASA is paying Russia to launch U.S. astronauts until SpaceX or another American company comes up with spaceships than can safely fly crews. Musk anticipates that happening by 2015.

 

Copyright © 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. 

 

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SpaceX Dragon capsule leaves International Space Station

By Irene Klotz | Reuters 

 

View Photo

Reuters/Reuters - The SpaceX Dragon capsule is captured by the crew of the International Space Station using its robotic arm in this screen capture from NASA handout video released March 3, 2013. REUTERS/N …more 

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - A Space Exploration Technologies' Dragon cargo capsule flew away from the International Space Station on Tuesday, loaded with experiment samples and gear for return to Earth.

Splashdown in the Pacific Ocean west of Mexico's Baja California is slated for 12:34 p.m. EDT.

Using the station's 58-foot long (18-meter) robotic arm, astronauts aboard the station plucked Dragon from its berthing port and released it into orbit at 6:56 a.m. EDT as the ships sailed 252 miles above the planet south of Australia.

Flight controllers with privately owned Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX as the company is known, then stepped in and remotely commanded Dragon to fire its steering thrusters to leave the station's orbit.

"It looks beautiful from here," station flight engineer Thomas Marshburn radioed to Mission Control in Houston as the capsule flew away.

"Sad to see the Dragon go. Performed her job beautifully, heading back to her lair. Wish her all the best for the splashdown today," Marshburn said.

The Dragon cargo ship reached the station on March 3 with more than 2,300 pounds (1,043 kg) of science equipment, spare parts, food and supplies. It was the second of 12 planned cargo runs for NASA under a $1.6 billion contract. A second freighter, built and operated by Orbital Sciences Corp (NYSE:ORB) is expected to debut this year.

The U.S. space agency hired both firms to fill the gap left by the retirement of its space shuttle fleet in 2011.

Dragon's arrival was delayed a day while SpaceX engineers grappled with a thruster pod problem that had threatened to derail the mission.

"I don't want to go through that again. That was hard-core," SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk said during a keynote speech at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, earlier this month.

PRECISION RENDEVOUS

Engineers believe the glitch was caused by a blockage in a pressurization line or a stuck valve. It was cleared and the capsule made a precision rendezvous with the station with no problems. An investigation remains under way, said company spokeswoman Christina Ra.

Dragon will return to Earth with 2,668 (1,210 kg) of cargo, including a freezer filled with biological samples from the crew for medical research.

While Russian, European and Japanese freighters also service the station, only the SpaceX vessel is designed to return cargo to Earth, a critical transportation link that had been lost with the retirement of the shuttles.

SpaceX is working to upgrade the Dragon capsule to fly people as well.

A test flight with company astronauts is targeted for 2016.

In addition to enhancing the Dragon capsules, SpaceX is working on an upgraded Falcon 9 rocket. Last week, the rocket's new Merlin engines completed a 28th and final test run, certifying it for flight, Ra said.

The company plans to debut its upgraded Falcon 9 rocket on a science satellite-delivery mission for the Canadian Space Agency in June. That rocket also will be the first flight from SpaceX's new launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Five previous Falcon 9 flights have launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Dragon's return initially was scheduled for Monday, but it was docked an extra day because of high seas in the Pacific. Splashdown is expected about 214 miles west of Baja California.

A recovery ship will retrieve the capsule and ferry it back to the Port of Los Angeles, a journey expected to take about 30 hours.

Meanwhile, Orbital Sciences Corp, which holds an eight-flight, $1.9 billion NASA contract for station resupply flights, plans to test launch its new Antares rocket as early as April 16 from the commercial Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

Orbital's Cygnus cargo capsule is targeted to make a demonstration run to the space station later in the year.

(Editing by Vicki Allen)

 

Copyright © 2013 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. 

 

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SpaceX Dragon Cargo Capsule Heading Back to Earth

by Miriam Kramer, SPACE.com Staff Writer

26 March 2013 Time: 06:57 AM ET

 

 

A SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule is seen at the end of the International Space Station's robotic arm, with the bright Earth in the background, in this view from a station camera on March 26, 2013 during undocking activities. CREDIT: NASA TV View full size image

A private SpaceX cargo capsule undocked from the International Space Station early Tuesday to begin the trip back to Earth after three weeks linked to the orbiting laboratory.

The unmanned Dragon space capsule was released from the space station today (March 26) at 6:56 a.m. EDT (1056 GMT), and is expected to splash down in the Pacific Ocean, about 214 miles (344 kilometers) off the coast of Baja California, at 12:34 p.m. EST (1634 GMT). The Dragon capsule is expected to fire its thrusters at 11:42 a.m. EDT (1542 GMT) to leave orbit.

"Sad to see the Dragon go,"  NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn said from inside the station. "She performed her job beautifully, now heading back to her lair."

Dragon is returning to Earth with about 2,670 pounds (1,210 kg) of cargo, including a set of LEGO toys that have been on the station for the last two years. The equipment will be returned to NASA as soon as recovery teams return the Dragon capsule to dry land.

The spacecraft launched toward the space station atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on March 1 from the firm's launch pad at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida to deliver about 1,200 pounds (1,210 kilograms) of equipment, supplies and scientific experiments. [Photos: SpaceX Dragon's Space Station Cargo Flight]

Once Dragon splashes down it will mark the end of Hawthorne, Calif., based private spaceflight firm SpaceX's second complete cargo mission to the International Space Station commissioned by NASA. The space agency contracted the spaceflight company to make 12 trips to the space station for $1.6 billion.

SpaceX launched its first Dragon cargo mission to the station in October 2012 following a successful demonstration flight in May of that year. The company was founded in 2002 by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk to develop low-cost rockets and spacecraft.

Dragon's splashdown was originally slated for Monday (March 25), but weather concerns and high seas at its splashdown point prompted NASA and SpaceX officials to delay the undocking. None of the returning experiments should be affected by the one-day delay, NASA officials said.

Currently, Dragon is the only operating cargo vessel that can bring supplies back to Earth as well as deliver them to astronauts in low-Earth orbit. Russia's Progress spacecraft, Europe's Automated Transfer Vehicles and Japan's H-2 Transfer Vehicles burn up upon re-entry into the planet's atmosphere.

SpaceX is one of two private spaceflight companies with a NASA contract for unmanned cargo delivery missions to the International Space Station. The Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp. signed on with the space agency to make eight unmanned flights with its Antares rocket and Cygnus capsule in a deal for $1.9 billion. The Antares rocket's first test flight is scheduled for mid-April.

With the retirement of NASA's space shuttle fleet in 2011, the U.S. space agency is currently dependent on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft to ferry astronaut crews to and from the space station. NASA plans to use new private space taxis to launch American astronauts on trips to the space station once they become available.

SpaceX is one of four companies currently competing for the NASA crew launch contract. The company is developing a manned version of its Dragon capsule designed to ferry seven astronauts into low-Earth orbit and return them to Earth.  

 

Copyright © 2013 TechMediaNetwork.com All rights reserved.

 

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SpaceX capsule set to return from orbit, splash down in Pacific

SpaceX's Dragon capsule is attached to the International Space Station during the resupply mission. (NASA)

 

By W.J. Hennigan

March 25, 2013, 2:00 p.m.

After spending more than three weeks docked with the International Space Station, SpaceX's Dragon space capsule is ready to return to Earth and splash down Tuesday in the Pacific Ocean.

NASA Television will provide coverage of Dragon's departure beginning at 1 a.m. Pacific time, although the release of the spacecraft isn't expected until 4:06 a.m.

The Dragon capsule will return with about 2,668 pounds of science samples from human research, biology and biotechnology studies, physical science investigations and education activities for NASA, the space agency said.

Dragon is slated to splash down around 9:36 a.m. in the Pacific Ocean about 300 miles west of Baja California.

PHOTOS: A 'new era': Private-sector space mission

The Hawthorne company, whose formal name is Space Exploration Technologies Corp.,  initially planned to return the capsule on Monday, but rescheduled because of inclement weather.

SpaceX's mission began March 1 with a launch of its Falcon 9 rocket, carrying the Dragon capsule, from Cape Canaveral, Fla.  The capsule was packed with more than 1,200 pounds of food, scientific experiments and other cargo for delivery to the six astronauts aboard the space station.

Shortly after blastoff, the company ran into a thruster issue with its Dragon capsule as it orbited around the Earth. But in a matter of hours engineers resolved the problem with the thrusters, which help maneuver the capsule in orbit. The capsule later docked with the station.

The resupply mission was SpaceX's second of 12 missions made under a $1.6-billion contract with NASA. The other official resupply mission was made in October, and a demonstration mission took place in May.

NASA wants to turn the job of carrying cargo and crews over to private industry. Meanwhile, the agency will focus on deep-space missions to land astronauts on asteroids and Mars.

SpaceX, founded in 2002, employs nearly 3,000 scientists, engineers and technicians, many of whom work at the company's sprawling production facility in Hawthorne, where it builds rockets and capsules.

But SpaceX is not alone in the so-called private space race. Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., is nipping at the company's heels, with a test flight of its commercial rocket set for later this year. Orbital also has a $1.9-billion cargo-hauling contract with NASA.

Copyright © 2013, Los Angeles Times

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