For the first time, NASA is relying on a recycled SpaceX rocket and capsule for a crew.
Astronaut Megan McArthur especially enjoys the reused spacecraft that will take off Thursday morning. In a ‘fun turn’, she will be sitting in the same seat in the same capsule as her husband, Bob Behnken, did last spring for a test flight to the International Space Station.
“It’s a nice thing we can share. I can see him and say, ‘Hey, can you hand over the keys? I’m ready to go now, ” she said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.
While their 7-year-old son, Theo, becomes a forward at the launch of their parents, McArthur said he’s been away for six months, he’s not very excited. This is how long she and her three crew members will spend at the space station.
This will be SpaceX’s third NASA spaceflight flight from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in less than a year. The commercial flights ended US dependence on Russian rockets launched from Kazakhstan to get astronauts to and from the space station after the shuttle buses retired.
SpaceX’s Benji Reed noted on Tuesday that the private company had already put six people in space – as much as NASA’s Project Mercury did in the early 1960s when the first Americans were launched. The upcoming flight will increase the number to 10.
Some highlights of the SpaceX flight:
Use, recycle, repeat
Both the Dragon capsule and the Falcon rocket for this mission have skyrocketed once before.
The capsule launched the first SpaceX crew last May, while the rocket hoisted the second set of astronauts, who are still at the space station. For SpaceX, recycling is the key to exploring space, Reed said, reducing costs, increasing flights and destinations, and getting more types of people on board.
Each capsule is designed to launch at least five times with a crew. SpaceX and NASA assess how many times a Falcon can safely launch astronauts. For satellites, Falcons can be used for ten flights.
The company uses the same type of rocket and similar capsules for station supplies, and recycles them as well.
An international crew
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This is the most internationally diverse crew yet for SpaceX
. NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough, a retired army colonel, is the commander of the spacecraft, with McArthur, an oceanographer, as pilot
. Thomas Pesquet, a former Air France pilot, represents the European Space Agency
. Engineer Akihiko Hoshide has been working for the Japanese space agency for almost 30 years, helping to build the space station.
. Everyone except McArthur has already visited the 260-kilometer (420-kilometer-high) outpost. But she ventured 160 kilometers higher with the spacecraft and participated in NASA’s last Hubble Space Telescope mission in 2009.
. The four began a new recycled rocket tradition for SpaceX crew, writing their initials in the soot of their boosr.
.ON Eetlus
WETIT
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As French and Japanese astronauts fly together, the dining room promises new heights. Hoshide includes curry and rice, as well as canned fish and yakitori – grilled and skewered chicken – but no
soesji. Pesquet makes a Michelin-starred chef whip up French delicacies: beef with red wine and mushroom sauce, truffle potato and onion pie and almond pie with caramelized pears. There is also Crepes Suzette. Pesquet said last weekend he had “national pressure” to fly French
uisine. His crew members also had high expectations: ‘OK, we’re flying with a Frenchman, it’s better b
Come and go
FC come and go
& GO
Five days after the crew arrives at the space station, the one Japanese and three American astronauts who have been there since November will enter their spa.
ceX capsule to get home. NASA wants some time in the lane between the two crew members so the newcomers can benefit from their colleagues’ experience up there. SpaceX is targeting a return on April 28 in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast
of Tallahassee, Florida. The company has already consulted with the Coast Guard to prevent pleasure boats from flooding the area as for the first SpaceX crew in August. More Coast Guard ships love space travel.