Category: Rocketry

(Image Credit: Elon Musk)

The time has finally come for SpaceX to fly their crew-ready Dragon capsule on the first Demo mission for their client, NASA! This tremendously important milestone marks start of the next important phase in the effort to return American capacity for human spaceflight, which has been lost since the end of the shuttle program in 2011.

It was several years after the end of the famous shuttle missions that NASA realized the way forward would very likely be with private enterprise, and wisely awarded two contracts, to Boeing and SpaceX, for them to develop crew-rated craft and systems to safely bring astronauts to the ISS and return them safely to Earth. Of course, NASA has a long history of human space travel, and some very reasonable associated rules, regulations and certifications that must be achieved in order to qualify a vehicle for that task. Saturday’s flight will be a critical next step in that certification process, and if all goes well, it may result in a crew mission taking place in July of this year (though more likely closer to December).

While this mission will not have any humans aboard the craft, it will feature a mannequin in the stylish SpaceX flight suit, bristling with sensors to capture as much information as possible about the experience of the flight. The name of this figure? Ripley. Nice.

Flight Time: Liftoff is set for 2:49 a.m. EST (0749 GMT)
Flight Location: NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, from historic Pad 39A (Apollo missions, and final Shuttle flight were launched from this pad as well)
Booster Recovery: on the autonomous robotic droneship Of Course I Still Love You

Webcast!

References:

• space.com
• arstechnica

(Image Credit: SpaceX)

After a handful of weeks without a launch, SpaceX comes roaring back (as they are wont to do!) with a pair of launches in quick succession, from opposite sides of our fair country. The first of the series is slated for Thursday, November 15th at 3:46pm from the historic pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The payload of this first launch is Qatar’s Es’hail 2 satellite, which is designed to improve television service across the Middle East as well as supply amateur radio capabilities for Brazil and India. The block 5 booster B1047 which is powering this launch is slated for landing on the Autonomous Drone Ship Of Course I Still Love You, which is in the Atlantic poised and ready for action.

Not to be outdone by themselves, SpaceX has another launch scheduled on November 19th from Vandenberg at their new SLC-4E pad. This launch, dubbed the SSO-A mission, will be remarkable, as it will be the first time in history that a rocket has been reused three times! The booster B1046 will carry what is being called a ‘rideshare mission’ into orbit, deploying more than 50 satellites from at least 17 countries. Included in the pile of technology are two SkySat high-resolution Earth Imaging devices, a middle school science project, the German Eu:CROPIS satellite designed to investigate crop growth in alternate gravity situations, ITASAT-1 from Brazilian Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica and plenty more! While SpaceX was recently certified to re-land rockets at Vandenberg, a range conflict this time around means that they will likely rely on Just Read the Instructions, which is being made ready to depart port and get into position for another flawless booster recovery at sea.

Check out the exhaustive and impressive list of rideshare equipment over at NASA Spaceflight.com! And enjoy these upcoming two launches!

References:

• CBS News
• falcon 9 launch wiki
• Nasa Spaceflight.com
• GeekWire

(Image Credit: Tom Cross)

One of the great things about having a genius-level CEO who is hell-bent on pushing mankind into the world they expected to already exist and is a massive sci-fi fan, is that the design aesthetic for everything his companies do is very consciously ‘futuristic’. And why not? It is fantastic to boldly own the fact that we really should look like the Jestons by now, instead of something from the set of 1984’s Repo Man.

A perfect example of this is the new Crew Access Arm (CAA) that SpaceX has installed on Pad 39a at Cape Canaveral. Seeing crew-based hardware going back up on this historic pad should make anyone familiar with recent history very excited, as it was from this very location that all Apollo missions to the moon, powered by the Saturn V, were launched along with many of the more recent Shuttle missions. Restoring that capability to American soil, through American inginuity is something we should all be proud of, and is something to be recognized and celebrated.

From a broader perspective – I believe firmly that the exploration and development of space will be a unifying force for a fractured world. Certainly there will be some unexpected struggles, as there always are, but I think that humans need a sense of adventure and exploration. It’s part of our makeup. We are lacking that now, and spinning our wheels with reality shows and iPhone apps, and basically circling the drain without a shared purpose. Space will be that purpose, and I feel will allow us to lift up from the state in which we find ourselves and achieve the next, better stage of our enlightened development, together as one people.

References:

• Teslarati – SpaceX’s futuristic Crew Dragon astronaut walkway is ready for US human spaceflight revival

(Image Source: NASA)

On August 3rd, NASA officially named the astronauts who will fly on the SpaceX and Boeing crew modules destined for the International Space Station. This is a tremendously important step, as it is allowing the US to reclaim their own access to space instead of relying on Russian launch capability as it has since 2011 when the Shuttle was officially mothballed.

On the SpaceX Crew Dragon:

• (test flight) Col. Bob Behnken of the Air Force
• (test flight) Doug Hurley, a retired Marine Corps colonel
• (ISS) Mike Hopkins, Air Force colonel
• (ISS) Victor Glover, Navy commander

On the Boeing CST-100 Starliner:

• (test flight) Eric Boe, a former space shuttle pilot who retired from the Air Force
• (test flight) Christopher Ferguson, a Boeing astronaut who left NASA in 2011
• (test flight) Lt. Col. Nicole Mann of the Marine Corps
• (ISS) Williams, a retired Navy captain
• (ISS) Cmdr. Josh Cassada of the Navy

The test flights will be here before we know it, with uncrewed flights of the new modules scheduled for late 2018, and the first human test flights slated for mid-2019.

References:

• The New York Times