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NASA and SpaceX have set April 22 as the launch date for the next Crew Dragon flight to the International Space Station. The fully experienced crew of four will be the first to fly a previously stolen Falcon 9 booster and reused Dragon spacecraft, and a NASA official said this week that the launcher and capsule are in “very good condition” at as the renovation is completed. at Cape Canaveral.
Crew Dragon ‘Endeavor’ spacecraft – the same capsule that flew to the space station last year with astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken – set to take off on top of a Falcon 9 rocket from downtown station 39A Kennedy Space Station. The April 22 launch time is 6:11 a.m. EDT (10:11 GMT), a NASA spokesperson said.
NASA confirmed the April 22 launch date on Friday, two days behind a previous target launch date of April 20. NASA and SpaceX officials said earlier this week that the launch might slip a few days to allow a “Trajectory to reach the space station after takeoff.”
Assuming the mission – designated Crew-2 – takes off as planned on April 22, the Crew Dragon will dock at the space station around 7:05 a.m. EDT (11:05 GMT) on April 23, the NASA spokesperson said. at Spaceflight Now.
Veteran NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough will command the Crew-2 mission. Kimbrough, who is on his third trip to orbit, will be joined by Megan McArthur, second space pilot, who will serve as the pilot of the Crew Dragon spacecraft. Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet will accompany Kimbrough and McArthur to the space station on a planned six-month expedition.
Hoshide and Pesquet will be on their third and second space missions, respectively.
SpaceX technicians at Cape Canaveral are refurbishing the Falcon 9 booster and the Crew Dragon spacecraft in preparation for the April 22 launch.
“I can happily say that the vast majority of the vehicle has been proven in flight,” said Benji Reed, senior director of human spaceflight programs at SpaceX, referring to the Crew Dragon spacecraft. “In this case, we change some valves, for example, we change part of the thermal protection system. On crew vehicles… we always fly new parachutes. So some of them are new, but otherwise it’s really the same vehicle that’s very carefully inspected, carefully prepared, refurbished as needed, and ready to fly.
Steve Stich, director of NASA’s commercial crew program, told a press conference on Monday that the Crew Dragon for the Crew-2 mission will feature “enhanced capabilities” designed to make the spacecraft safer and more ready. to deal with rougher seas and stronger winds.
“One of the improvements to this vehicle is the improved pad dropout performance,” Stich said. “The Dragon is designed to have continuous interrupt capability from launch to orbit. SpaceX went and looked for a way to optimize their thruster system and provide a little more thruster for an interruption out of the pad.
“It did a couple of things,” Stich said. “First, it improved the safety of the crew if we found ourselves in this kind of unfortunate situation for a disruption of service where the crew would need to leave the area in an emergency. And second, it really improved the availability of the launch. We can handle slightly stronger land winds and improve the availability of launches. “
The Crew Dragon could perform a pad stop if there is a major issue with the Falcon 9 rocket on the launch pad. The capsule would trigger its SuperDraco dropout motors to propel itself out of the rocket and over the Atlantic Ocean near the oceanfront launch complex in Florida, where the spacecraft would deploy parachutes and splash just offshore.
A pad abortion or in-flight abandonment would help ensure that astronauts can escape a catastrophic rocket failure.
A technical issue that delayed an astronaut’s first flight on a Crew Dragon spacecraft involved the explosion of a test capsule in 2019 just before SuperDraco engines fired on the ground. Investigators found that the explosion was caused by an unexpected interaction of nitrogen tetroxide, one of the propellants used in SuperDraco engines, with a titanium valve in the high pressure propulsion system. Stich said SpaceX modified the propulsion system for the upcoming mission to make it safer.
“We learned a lot about titanium nitrogen tetroxide, the oxidizer and this compatibility,” Stich said. “We’ve upgraded the SuperDraco thrusters and removed titanium from that system and moved to a stainless steel type of material in them, and improved safety.”
“I really see this flight as some kind of interrupted improvement flight,” Stich said. “If you step back and watch this flight, we improve the risk posture for the vehicle by improving abortions, improving the ability to drop the pad, removing titanium in the propulsion system, improving abortions.” downstream by modifying the software. So overall… we continue to strive to reduce the risks of the program over time. “
NASA engineers part of SpaceX’s Dragon refurbishment team at the Cape Canaveral space station have followed the spacecraft’s preparations from its splash in the Gulf of Mexico on August 2. The Crew Dragon Endeavor capsule spent 64 days in orbit, mostly docked. with the space station.
Stich said a review of the spacecraft’s refurbishment last Friday showed SpaceX and NASA are “really good” with their plans to reuse the capsule for the Crew-2 mission.
“When we go through this certification process, we are really looking at every part of the vehicle,” Stich said. “There’s new parachutes, a new heat shield, a new nose cone, new components, and then we look at what we’re doing during the refurbishment process… Overall, I don’t really see a high risk. of reuse because we went through a methodical process, and we checked as and when the components were reinstalled. “
Kimbrough said Monday that Crew-2 astronauts would keep the name “Endeavor” for the spacecraft that Hurley and Behnken revealed shortly after their launch last May.
Other changes to the Crew Dragon Endeavor spacecraft include strengthening the outer structure of the capsule to handle splashing in more difficult sea conditions. The changes are primarily aimed at reducing impacts to the structure through a “secondary splash,” where water can hit the spacecraft moments after it parachutes into the ocean.
“If there’s just the right combination of wave heights, winds and vehicle speed when it comes in, that secondary splash can hit pretty hard,” Reed said. “So we’ve done a lot to analyze that and test that, and what it ultimately does is you make the vehicle as strong as possible to resist that, but you also look at the weather. So you create a lot of boundaries around the weather, wind speed, and wave heights, and all of these different things that happen. “
But meteorological constraints can limit launch and landing opportunities on crewed missions.
“One of the things that we have done is that we have actually strengthened some parts of the structure, so that we can widen that window of opportunity to bring the crew home, while still maintaining all that safety and all that margin. for the crew, ”Reed said. “I think it’s a really important update that we’ve done on this particular Dragon. And in the future, that will always be part of the design. “
Reed said SpaceX took its time to refurbish the Crew Dragon between last year’s test flight and the Crew-2. mission. “As we go through this process, we find out what needs to be completely replaced, the areas we should inspect more deeply, the kinds of things we need to do in the future.”
SpaceX ultimately wants to shorten the renovation schedule to “a few months,” according to Reed. Locating the renovations near the launch site in Cape Canaveral, rather than the SpaceX plant in California or the Central Texas test facility, helps streamline the process.
“The golden key to entering this new space age is to remake and reuse vehicles,” said Reed.
Crew training for the next Dragon launch will end soon. Kimbrough and his teammates will travel to the Florida launch pad later this month and crawl into their spacecraft for final inspections, then return to Florida in mid-April for final rehearsals before takeoff on April 22. .
The Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft currently docked at the space station will move to another port in the orbital complex in late March or early April, freeing up the station’s forward docking point for the arrival of Crew-2 astronauts. The Crew-1 astronauts, which were launched aboard the Resilience spacecraft in November, will be aboard the craft for the automated relocation maneuver.
After the arrival of the Crew-2 mission next month, the space station will temporarily have 11 astronauts on board. After a week’s transfer, Crew 1 Commander Mike Hopkins, Pilot Victor Glover, and Mission Specialists Soichi Noguchi and Shannon Walker will leave the space station in late April or early May and head to the landing off the coast of Florida, concluding a five – a month and a half flight into orbit.
NASA and SpaceX want the Crew-1 mission to return to Earth before May 9, when movement from the orbit of the space station would only offer night landing opportunities for the Crew Dragon.
The Crew-2 launch will reuse the same Falcon 9 booster recovered after the Crew-1 launch in November.
April is a busy month for crew rotations at the space station. A Russian Soyuz spacecraft is scheduled to launch from Kazakhstan on April 9 with two Russian cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut to replace a Soyuz crew that has been at the station since October. The outgoing Soyuz will detach and land in Kazakhstan on April 17.
“We are thrilled and ready to start,” said Reed. “Obviously we keep checking all the boxes, three times under all the stones and everywhere to make sure we’re ready to pilot this crew. And as we always say, we won’t fly until we’re ready.
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