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Early Monday, a Crew Dragon was docked in the “front” port of the Harmony module.
NASA Television
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Four crew members were inside the Dragon spaceship Resilience.
NASA Television
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Soon they started to move away from the station.
NASA Television
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And further.
NASA television
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The spacecraft reached a distance of 60 meters and reoriented itself.
NASA Television
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Then the vehicle came back.
NASA Television
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It arrived to dock with the “zenith” port on the same space station module.
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Almost there.
NASA Television
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And less than an hour later, it was all back.
NASA Television
Early Monday morning, four astronauts donned their flight suits and boarded their Crew Dragon spacecraft, named Resilience.
But they weren’t coming home. On the contrary, NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, as well as Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, were preparing to move the Crew Dragon spacecraft for the first time.
In 38 minutes, the spacecraft recoiled smoothly from the Harmony module of the International Space Station to a distance of 60 meters from the large laboratory. Under the power of his Draco thrusters, Resilience then redirected to connect to another port on the Harmony module.
During this autonomous maneuver, Resilience moved from the “front” port of the module to its “zenith” port. The reason for this redesign was the anticipated arrival of another Crew Dragon mission in a few weeks – carrying four more astronauts – to the space station, as well as a Dragon cargo mission in June.
This cargo mission, the 22nd flown by SpaceX, will carry large solar panels for the space station inside its trunk. This Cargo Dragon must dock at the zenith port to allow the large robotic arm of the space station to grab the panels for the installation of the space station. This arm could not reach the “trunk” of the spacecraft if it was docked in the forward port.
So on Monday Resilience moved to this zenith port. This will allow the next crew mission, to be launched no earlier than April 22, to dock at the forward port. Then after Resilience Leaving at the end of April, the CRS-22 cargo mission will be free to dock at the zenith port.
NASA
It can all be a little confusing, we’ll admit, but the bottom line is that SpaceX Dragons is kind of creating a traffic jam in orbit. NASA, of course, is very happy to have an American spacecraft to provide the station with both cargo and crew.
So why were four crew members needed on board the vehicle if the whole procedure was self-contained? For the Crew-1 mission carrying Hopkins, Glover, Walker and Noguchi, Resilience is their return home. So even if they never touched the flight controls, the crew had to be inside the spacecraft in case an emergency – however unlikely – arose and they had to abort the maneuver and return to Earth. Fortunately, this did not happen.
Listing Image by NASA TV
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