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A week after the test shot of SpaceX's new crew capsule failed, SpaceX successfully completed the firing of its next Falcon 9 launcher on Saturday morning at Cape Canaveral in preparation for the launch. a takeoff at dawn on Wednesday, carrying several tons of food, supplies and experiments. at the International Space Station.
The Falcon 9 rocket, without its Dragon cargo capsule, lit up nine Merlin 1D first-stage engines on Saturday at 14:00 EDT (1400 GMT), sending an exhaust gas plume through the air as kerosene-fueled power plants rose. at full throttle, producing 1.7 million pounds of thrust.
SpaceX confirmed a good test in a tweet shortly after the sustaining shot.
Restraints kept the Falcon 9 rocket firmly on the ground during the tests, which lasted several seconds. SpaceX will lower the Falcon 9 rocket to the Complex 40 launch pad and bring it back to a nearby hangar, where it will be connected to the Dragon probe, which will be reused after a previous trip to the space station.
The Falcon 9 and its return will return to the platform next week in anticipation of Wednesday, May 1, at 3:59 am EDT (07:59 GMT), about the same time the Earth's rotation returns the launch pad under the orbital plane of the space station.
SpaceX plans to land the first stage of the Falcon 9 on a drone in the Atlantic Ocean approximately 28 km southeast of the launch pad or east of the easternmost point of Cape Canaveral.
SpaceX Landing Zone 1, an old Atlas launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Base, was the site of the explosion of a Crew Dragon spacecraft during ground tests. Investigators and ground crews secure the site after the accident and gather evidence to help determine the cause of the accident, which has seriously impeded the commercial crew capsule program developed in partnership between SpaceX and The NASA.
The accident prompted SpaceX to move the landing of the rocket on the next launch of Falcon 9 from the ground installation to the offshore drone. The space station's replenishment missions do not require all the lifting capacity of the Falcon 9, leaving enough fuel in the first leg to reverse course and return to Cape Canaveral. The drone will be placed just off the coast, not at the usual distance. several hundred kilometers downstream.
NASA and SpaceX officials are assessing whether the crash of the weekend could raise concerns over the upcoming Dragon Replenishment mission, according to members of NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Committee. But the Dragon cargo ship is very different from the crewed Dragon and the April 20 crash occurred during a hot test of the crew capsule's SuperDraco abandonment engines, which are not used on a Dragon spaceship that is due to take off next week.
SpaceX is continuing preparations for Wednesday's launch, but the Crew Dragon accident could again be discussed by senior executives during a pre-launch review scheduled for Tuesday.
The mission was to be unstuck on Tuesday, after a test test of Falcon 9 engines Friday. But the static fire has been postponed to Saturday for unspecified reasons – SpaceX does not usually discuss the timing of hot pre-launch tests before their completion – which has delayed the launch of the test until Wednesday.
A forecast released Friday by the US Air Force's 45th Weather Squadron predicted a 80% probability of favorable weather for a launch at dawn on Wednesday.
Assuming the Falcon 9 takes off on Wednesday, the Dragon tanker is expected to reach the space station early Saturday. The station's astronauts will attack the Dragon freighter using the robotic arm built in Canada by the in-orbit laboratory, and then transport the supply ship to a berth for a planned stay of about a month.
While the astronauts unpack the food, supplies and biological experiments carried out in the Dragon's pressurized compartment, the robotic arms located outside the station will retrieve a pair of instruments to be mounted on scientific bridges at the site. outside the complex.
One of the experiments, developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, will measure the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere during a three-year mission. Scientists want to extend the registration of space-based carbon dioxide measurements begun in 2014 by NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory satellite mission, which has exceeded its expected life.
Another external unit inside Dragon, managed by the US Army's space testing program, hosts several investigations, including a new X-ray communication experiment developed by NASA and the Naval Research Laboratory. According to scientists, x-ray signals could be a new means of communication with deep-space probes or hypersonic missiles in flight.
Wednesday's launch will be SpaceX's fifth mission of the year and the fifth launch since Cape Canaveral in 2019.
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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @ StephenClark1.
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