For the third time ever, SpaceX has installed a Crew Dragon spacecraft that is planned to send astronauts on the Falcon 9 rocket that will transport it to an orbit and sail past one of the last major milestones of the mission.
The NASA Commercial Crew Program (CCP), known as Crew-2, will be SpaceX’s second operational crew ferry launch after its operational Crew-1 debut flawlessly launched on November 15, 2020. Since November 16, the Crew- 1 Crew Dragon moored at the International Space Station (ISS) in Low Earth orbit (LEO) – indicating at least two main primaries – and will not return to Earth until Crew-2 has safely joined the station.
Simultaneously evolving as part of the Commercial Crew program, a series of technical and organizational shortcomings significantly delayed Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule, forcing NASA to rely on SpaceX to pick up the slack with multiple Crew Dragon missions . Apart from organizational excellence, Crew-2 is also on track to achieve two of the most important reusable achievements in SpaceX’s long history of significant reusable achievements.
A few days after a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft boarded NASA astronauts for the first time ever and became the first crew launch in history to use a commercially developed rocket. or spacecraft, the space agency effectively gave the company permission to let its astronauts fly further flight proof versions of the same vehicles.
While these plans have effectively fallen under the radar compared to other SpaceX activities, it is not unreasonable to say that a successful Crew-2 launch with both is a flight-proven Falcon 9 booster. and Crew Dragon Hairstyle would be one of the most important technical achievements in the history of the company. At a minimum, it is shall be the most important achievement in the history of SpaceX.
In essence, success would mean that SpaceX has unequivocally proven that a private company can – from scratch – develop methods for using rockets and spacecraft that are so successful and so reliable that the most risk-averse customer on earth is willing to placing lives of his astronauts in the hands of that aircraft-proven spacecraft and rockets. If SpaceX can achieve the feat with Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon, there is no practical reason to doubt that it can be repeated with Starship – a vehicle that has already piqued NASA’s interest.
The Crew Dragon capsule assigned to Crew-2 launched on May 30, 2020 and carried NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the ISS without any major problem, where it was a little over two months in orbit spent. On August 2, the spacecraft re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere safely, at about 7.5 kilometers per second (17,000 mph) and crashed into the Gulf of Mexico, with both astronauts all the worse. Since then, SpaceX has taken the Dragon apart, carefully examining every possible inch, and refurbishing the vehicle for Crew-2.
Despite the historic nature of the task of qualifying and refurbishing the first commercial spacecraft in history that NASA is expected to launch astronauts two times, Crew Dragon C206’s turnaround will be the fastest in Dragon’s history – and with a margin of almost 40%.
After increasing its role in SpaceX’s first operational astronaut launch five months ago, Falcon 9 booster B1061 will also fly on Crew-2 for the second time – especially fitting as the Crew-2 will meet the only other spacecraft and astronauts flying on the same booster at the ISS. As of Thursday, April 15, Crew-2 is seven days away from a launch scheduled for no earlier than 06:11 EDT (10:11 UTC) on Thursday, April 22. The aircraft-proven Dragon and Falcon 9 booster and a new, spent upper stage are expected to roll out to Road 39A within the next few days for an integrated static fire test 4-5 days before launch.