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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was slid into space early Saturday, propelling the company's first spacecraft, Crew Dragon, into orbit on an unmanned test flight and ushering in a new era for American spaceflight. It was the first launch of a commercially developed capsule to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
Lighting the night sky for miles, the nine engines of the first rocket ignited and reached their maximum cruising speed at 2:49 (ET), generating 1.7 million pounds of thrust and rapid thunder from the complex. 39A launch located at the Kennedy Space Center.
Dragging along a long, brilliant escape, the rocket of a height of 215 meters accelerated smoothly as she headed north-east, climbing directly into the plane of the plane. Orbit of the International Space Station. The laboratory complex flew over Florida 26 minutes before takeoff and was 258 miles above Iraq at launch.
Astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken plan to board the next Dragon Crew on his second test flight, scheduled for mid-summer, 5.2 km from the control room launch pad SpaceX. This will be the first launch of American astronauts aboard an American rocket since the end of the shuttle program in 2011.
STRINGER / REUTERS
"I can not begin to explain how exciting it is for a test pilot to make the first theft of a vehicle," Hurley told reporters, a veteran of the shuttle and former Marine Corps F / A-18 pilot, prior to launch. . "We'll be ready when SpaceX and NASA are ready to fly it."
This will depend on how the non-pilot Crew Dragon behave this week during the initial launch of the commercial crew program – a flight designed to thoroughly test the myriad of spacecraft systems before trust him for the transport of astronauts. In addition to withstanding the rigors of the launch, the capsule must meet autonomously with the space station early Sunday, then return to Earth Friday with a hypersonic dive into the atmosphere and splashing into the Atlantic Ocean east of Cape Canaveral.
"We will test its navigation capabilities, avionics and telemetry, we will also test the reaction control system, its ability to anchor, its ability to return," said Jim Bridenstine, director from NASA. . "We will make assessments based on this on how this might need to be changed or modified."
"Finally, we will also do an abandonment test, and then, based on all of these tests, we want to launch US astronauts on American rockets from US soil for the first time since the withdrawal of the shuttle. space (in 2011). "
Elon Musk, founder and chief designer of SpaceX, said he was relieved that the mission had started without problems. All major capsule systems were functioning normally after going into orbit.
"I would like to express a very strong thank you note to the SpaceX team," he said at a press conference after the launch. "It has been 17 years to get to this point, from 2002 to now, hard work and incredible sacrifices on the part of a lot of people.
"To be honest, I'm a little emotionally exhausted, it was very stressful, but it has worked so far," he said. "We have to stop at the station, we have to come back, but until now it has worked, we have adopted some of the more risky elements."
MIKE BLAKE / REUTERS
The mission began in a spectacular way. Thousands of tourists and residents of the region are expected to gather along the "Space Coast" in Florida.
The first-stage engines propelled the Falcon 9 out of the thick atmosphere of the lower atmosphere, extinguishing about two and a half minutes after take-off. The stage then fell and headed for an off-shore drone while the single-engine engine of the Falcon 9's second stage continued the Crew Dragon's orbit.
The second stage engine was stopped about nine minutes after launch, about a minute before the first stage was installed at a specific point of landing on the drone "Of course I love you" again, "marking the success of SpaceX's 35th booster recovery.
Moments later, the Crew Dragon capsule was released from the second leg, giving the kickoff to an automated 27-hour rendezvous with the space station. Bridenstine, NASA, was delighted. The launch of this tweet opened a "new chapter of American excellence".
Hopefully, the stocky capsule, containing about 400 pounds of supplies and an astronaut test dummy nicknamed Ripley, according to the heroine of the science fiction thriller "Alien" will catch up the lab complex early Sunday, approaching from behind and below before looping up to a point directly in front of the station.
ISS Commander Oleg Kononenko, flight engineer Anne McClain and Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques will be held inside the outpost, overseeing up close to the trajectory and speed of the crew dragon to make sure it's working as expected. They also plan to send orders to verify that a crew from the station can interrupt an approach if necessary.
Once this is complete, the spacecraft will stop at the station's attacking port at around 6 am, as both vehicles pass over the Pacific Ocean northwest of Samoa to nearly five miles a second. The hatches will open approximately two hours later.
The ship will remain attached to the station until next Friday, when it will disarm, fire its rockets and head for a landing in the Atlantic Ocean 230 km east of Cape Canaveral. Recovery teams will be posted nearby to return the capsule to shore for thorough post-flight inspections.
A successful test flight, coupled with a critical flight test of Falcon 9 / Crew Dragon's launch abandonment system in April, will help pave the way for the first flight piloted at the mid-July, ending an eight-year hiatus. in NASA's launch capability of the human space.
"It is an invaluable exercise for us to learn in the space environment how these systems will work, then to make sure these systems are ready for use as soon as We will engage our crews, "said Kathy Lueders, director of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, told reporters Thursday. "We have instrumented the shit of this vehicle."
The Commercial Crew Program is the end result of a series of NASA-funded industry competitions following the withdrawal of the shuttle to develop a new US spacecraft to transport astronauts to and from the low Earth orbit.
NASA awarded Boeing several contracts totaling $ 4.82 billion for the development of a commercial crew vessel, now known as the CST-100 Starliner, a capsule that will be launched from Cape Canaveral Air Base at top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas rocket 5.
NASA
SpaceX has also won a series of contracts totaling some $ 3.1 billion to date to develop a pilot version of the company's Dragon cargo. The company holds a separate freight contract valued at $ 3.04 billion for 20 replenishment flights of space stations and another contract of unspecified amount for at least six additional flights up to $ 30 million. in 2024.
NASA's commercial crew contracts required both companies to provide their own financing.
Crew Dragon and CST-100 Starliner will both bring supplies and four astronauts to the space station. They will approach the laboratory directly in front of or above and will dock in newly modified ports located at the front of the complex. The Starliner will return to landing in the western United States, while the Crew Dragon infiltrates the Atlantic Ocean, east of Cape Canaveral.
Boeing plans to launch its CST-100 Starliner airliner on an unmanned test flight by April-May. Assuming that the unmanned flights are going well, and with the latest tests of the abandonment system of each company, SpaceX plans to launch Behnken and Hurley aboard another Crew Dragon in the middle of the summer. This mission is called Demo 2.
The first flight piloted by Boeing, carrying a crew of three, is scheduled to take place this fall. If no major problem arises, the rotation flights of operational crews could begin before the end of the year, thus ending the exclusive dependence of NASA on the Russian satellite Soyuz for journeys to and from from the station.
But NASA covers its bets. The last two US contract seats of a Russian Soyuz jet will be used in July for the launch of NASA astronaut Drew Morgan and Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano. NASA officials plan to buy two additional Soyuz seats, one for next autumn and one next spring.
This would ensure that US-sponsored astronauts orbit the station for most of next year, even if the commercial crew program encounters major problems or delays in the program. trials.
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