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Sunday, May 27, 2012
Space x news 5/27/12
Human Spaceflight News
Sunday, May 27, 2012
HEADLINES AND LEADS
Astronauts open hatch, enter Dragon capsule
William Harwood - CBS News
Running well ahead of schedule, the International Space Station's crew opened hatches between the Harmony module and the newly arrived SpaceX Dragon cargo ship early Saturday to kick off a busy few days of work to unload about a half ton of supplies and equipment. Wearing goggles and filter masks to protect against any floating contaminants that might be present -- a routine precaution when visiting cargo craft arrive -- flight engineer Donald Pettit and Expedition 31 commander Oleg Kononenko cracked open the hatch and floated inside at 5:53 a.m. EDT.
NASA astronauts open SpaceX capsule hatch and begin unloading cargo
W.J. Hennigan - Los Angeles Times
Less than 24 hours after a historic docking, astronauts aboard the International Space Station clambered into SpaceX's unmanned Dragon spacecraft and began unloading supplies that were packed inside. Wearing oxygen masks as a precaution, the astronauts opened the hatch, slid the door open, and took delivery of the 1,014 pounds of food, water and clothing aboard Dragon. "Like the smell of a brand new car," said NASA astronaut Don Pettit, after going inside.
Space station crew opens door to commercial spaceship
Stephen Clark – SpaceflightNow.com
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station opened the door on the lab's first commercial resupply craft Saturday, accessing more than 1,000 pounds of food, clothing and experiments stowed inside. But one of the most vital functions of the privately-owned cargo ship - its ability to safely return space station equipment to Earth - is yet to be demonstrated. The space station's Expedition 31 crew opened Dragon's hatch Saturday at 5:53 a.m. EDT (0953 GMT), and the astronauts plan to spend 25 hours removing the craft's supply cache and installing equipment tagged for shipment back to Earth.
Astronauts enter world's 1st private supply ship
Marcia Dunn - Associated Press
Space station astronauts floated into the Dragon on Saturday, a day after its heralded arrival as the world's first commercial supply ship. NASA astronaut Donald Pettit, the first one inside the docked capsule, said the Dragon looks like it carries about as much cargo as his pickup truck back home in Houston. It has the smell of a brand new car, he added. "I spent quite a bit of time poking around in here this morning, just looking at the engineering and the layout, and I'm very pleased," Pettit said from the brilliant white compartment.
Astronauts float inside SpaceX Dragon capsule
Irene Klotz - Reuters
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station opened the hatch and floated inside a Space Exploration Technologies' Dragon capsule on Saturday, the first privately owned spaceship to reach the orbital outpost, NASA said. Running ahead of schedule, station commander Oleg Kononenko and flight engineer Don Pettit opened the hatch to Dragon just before 6 a.m. EDT (1000 GMT), NASA mission commentator Josh Byerly reported from Mission Control in Houston. The bell-shaped capsule, which was making its second test flight, arrived at the space station on Friday.
ISS crew sees history, promise in Dragon
James Dean - Florida Today
Astronauts on board the International Space Station are enjoying their first look -- and smell -- of the newly arrived Dragon capsule after opening the hatch this morning. Astronauts on board the International Space Station are enjoying their first look -- and smell -- of the newly arrived Dragon capsule after opening the hatch this morning. Don Pettit said the capsule smelled like a new car and looked to be filled with about as much cargo as he could fit in his pickup truck. For historical significance, Pettit likened the arrival of the first commercial spacecraft at the station to completion of the transcontinental railroad with the hammering of a golden spike.
SpaceX: Space Station crew likes what it sees in new transport vehicle
Pete Spotts - Christian Science Monitor
The crew of the International Space Station got its first look at the inside of its newest visitor – Space Exploration Technologies Corporation's Dragon cargo ship – Saturday morning and pronounced it a keeper. The craft made aerospace history Friday by becoming the first commercially built and operated spacecraft to rendezvous and dock with another spacecraft on orbit. “I spent quite a bit of time poking around in here this morning looking at the engineering and the layout, and I'm very pleased,” observes Don Pettit, a space station flight engineer and the crew member who guided the station's robotic arm as it grappled the craft for docking Friday morning.
SpaceX’s Dragon capsule docks with international space station
Brian Vastag - Washington Post
With a near-flawless docking on Friday, start-up rocket company SpaceX achieved what only big governments have to date: It launched a mission to the international space station. The moment marked a pivot point in U.S. space ambitions, away from total NASA control and toward creative private enterprise. While NASA furnished seed money and technical advice, SpaceX engineers designed, built, launched and drove the white gumdrop-shaped Dragon capsule until the final moments.
Dragon attached to space station
William Harwood - CBS News
In a moment of high drama on the high frontier, flight engineer Donald Pettit, operating the International Space Station's robot arm, reached out and locked onto a commercial cargo ship early Friday after a complex rendezvous, a final sequence of approach-and-retreat test maneuvers and quick work to adjust critical sensors that were getting fooled by reflections from a Japanese research module. The last-minute hiccups were just that, nerve-wracking but relatively minor adjustments to correct for the real-world performance of complex laser and infrared imagers used to compute the Dragon cargo ship's velocity and distance from the station. But like everything in the world of manned spaceflight, where the stakes are high and the margins for error small, flight controllers in Houston and at SpaceX's Hawthorne, Calif., control center took their time, inserting additional checks to make sure everything was working properly.
SpaceX Dragon docks with Space Station
Success for private enterprise in orbit
Ned Potter - ABC News
“Looks like we’ve got a Dragon by the tail,” said NASA astronaut Don Pettit. The SpaceX Dragon capsule safely berthed to the International Space Station today, greeted by cheers in mission control and pronouncements about how a new era is beginning in orbit. The Dragon did something that has happened dozens of times before — made a successful rendezvous with the space station to deliver supplies. But it’s the first privately-owned spacecraft to make the trip. “It’s been a long time coming,” said Mike Suffredini, NASA’s space station program manager, this afternoon. “I can’t tell you how proud we are to have been a part of this historic moment.”
SpaceX Capsule Joins to Space Station
Andy Pasztor - Wall Street Journal
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. made history Friday by attaching the first private spacecraft to the international space station, a move that ultimately could change the economics and politics of U.S. space exploration. The unmanned Dragon capsule's halting, painstakingly slow final movements toward the station, where it was grabbed by a robotic arm at 9:56 a.m. Eastern daylight saving time, represents a first-of-its-kind achievement in the annals of space science. Until the Southern California company, known as SpaceX, succeeded in attaching the capsule to the space station, only governmental agencies had attempted such a rendezvous.
SpaceX Capsule Docks at Space Station
Kenneth Chang - New York Times
High above northwestern Australia, a robotic arm on the International Space Station grabbed onto a cargo capsule floating 10 meters away. With that simple act, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation of Hawthorne, Calif., or SpaceX, made history as the first private company to send a spacecraft to the space station. The grab — which NASA refers to as a grapple — occurred at 9:56 a.m. Eastern time on Friday. “Looks like we’ve got a Dragon by the tail,” said Donald Pettit, the NASA astronaut on the station who was operating the robotic arm, referring to Space X’s Dragon capsule.
ISS catch of the day: Dragon!
Eric Hand - Nature News
Dragon has become the first private spacecraft to reach the International Space Station. The cargo capsule, built by SpaceX and launched on a Falcon 9 rocket on 22 May, reached the station today just before 10 am Eastern time. “Looks like we caught a Dragon by the tail,” said astronaut Don Pettit.
'New car smell' as space station crew enters Dragon capsule
Melissa Gray - CNN
"Like the smell of a brand-new car" were the words of International Space Station astronaut Don Pettit on Saturday after he carefully opened the hatch and entered the Dragon capsule for his first glimpse inside. Dragon connected with the station Friday, making history as the first private capsule to reach the orbiting spacecraft. Pettit opened the hatch at 5:53 a.m. ET with Russian cosmonaut and station commander Oleg Kononenko by his side. The two men, wearing T-shirts, khaki shorts, goggles and masks gave the thumbs up to the camera after they floated inside.
SpaceX docks with International Space Station: Up next, public travel?
Scott Pelley - CBS News
There was a milestone in space today when a private, unmanned spacecraft owned and operated by an American company docked with the International Space Station. The capsule is called Dragon by its owner the SpaceX company of California. This is the future since the space shuttle stopped flying last July. The Obama administration turned the shuttle's missions over to private industry. SpaceX has a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to fly the Dragon on 12 missions to carry cargo to and from the station.
Dragon Capsule Berths To ISS To Set Space Milestone
Mark Carreau - Aviation Week
The SpaceX Dragon capsule rendezvoused with the International Space Station (ISS) May 25, overcoming some late tracking issues to become the first U.S. commercial resupply craft to dock with the six-person orbital science laboratory. Astronauts Don Pettit, Andre Kuipers and Joe Acaba grappled the unpiloted spacecraft with the station’s 17.6-meter (58-ft.) Canadarm2 at 9:56 a.m. EDT, as Dragon flew in formation 10 meters below. The freighter was berthed at the station’s U.S. segment Harmony module at 12:02 p.m. EDT.
First commercial cargo ship arrives at space station
Stephen Clark – SpaceflightNow.com
The International Space Station's robotic arm on Friday reached out and snared a cargo carrier built by SpaceX, making history after the privately-built Dragon spacecraft made a cautious laser-guided approach to the complex, becoming the first commercial spaceship to reach the massive scientific research facility. Astronaut Don Pettit at the controls of the station's Canadian robotic arm grappled the free-floating Dragon spacecraft at 9:56 a.m. EDT (1356 GMT) as it hovered about 30 feet below. "Looks like we've got a Dragon by the tail," Pettit radioed mission control moments after he locked onto the craft with the space station's 58-foot Canadian robot arm.
Private Dragon Capsule Arrives at Space Station in Historic First
Clara Moskowitz - Space.com
Two spacecraft, one public and one private, linked in orbit Friday when SpaceX's Dragon was attached to the International Space Station. The historic moment represented the first time a commercial spacecraft has ever docked at the weightless laboratory. NASA astronaut Don Pettit, controlling the space station's 58-foot (18-meter) robotic Canadarm2, berthed the unmanned Dragon capsule, built by commercial company SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corp.), to the space station's Harmony node at 12:02 p.m. EDT (1602 GMT).
Astronauts to Spend Memorial Day Unpacking Private Space Capsule
Mike Wall - Space.com
Rather than kick their feet up this Memorial Day weekend, the astronauts aboard the International Space Station will be unloading cargo from the first private spacecraft ever to visit the orbiting lab. SpaceX's unmanned Dragon capsule docked with the station Friday (May 25), making spaceflight history in the process. Another milestone came Saturday at about 5:53 a.m. EDT (0953 GMT), when the hatches between Dragon and the $100 billion orbiting lab were opened. The station's crew is now able to access the 1,014 pounds (460 kilograms) of cargo that Dragon brought up. But unpacking the capsule in earnest won't begin until Memorial Day (Monday, May 28), NASA officials said.
Final Frontier: Space Collisions and Liability
Joe Palazzolo - Wall Street Journal
Friday the world — or, more precisely, a clutch of nerds, we among them — watched as Space Exploration Technologies Corp. made history by attaching the first private spacecraft to the international space station. Of course, every seminal event has legal implications, or at least the promise of them. Timothy Nelson, a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, has considered a future in which private spacecraft and their jetsam clog Earth’s orbit, greatly increasing the chances of a collision.
Space shuttle replica headed for Houston
Harvey Rice - Houston Chronicle
A 123-foot space shuttle is headed for Houston on Thursday from a dock at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a journey expected to take eight days. The detailed replica, known as the Explorer, is expected to arrive in Galveston Bay on June 1, said Jeff Carr, a spokesman for Griffin Communications Group, which is organizing events surrounding the arrival of the replica for the Space Center Houston. The Seabrook-Kemah Bridge will be closed for about 30 minutes beginning about noon until the barge and the 54-foot high replica pass into the Clear Lake Channel, Carr said.
Space shuttle replica sails out of Port Canaveral for Houston
Greg Pallone - Central Florida News 13
Another space shuttle has left Central Florida forever. Space shuttle Explorer, the replica that used to be displayed in front of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, was loaded onto a barge Thursday. Explorer is on its way to the Space Center Houston tourism facility, at Johnson Space Center, where it will remain on permanent display.
SpaceX leads new space race
John Kelly - Florida Today (Commentary)
The old way of developing space vehicles is dead. With fewer people, less time and a fraction of the money that the government would have spent, Elon Musk and his company, Space Exploration Technologies, designed and built a new spaceship, launched it on the company’s own Falcon 9 rocket and flew the craft to the International Space Station. Dragon’s arrival at the orbiting lab on Friday was not only historic, but also game-changing.
Obama's tough decisions will lead nation forward in space
Mark Kelly - Orlando Sentinel (Opinion)
(Kelly is a former astronaut who flew on four Space Shuttle missions. He retired from the Navy and NASA in October 2011. He is married to former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona)
The men and women who make our nation's space program great — like those who built our nation — are driven by the question, "What's next?" Americans are built to explore, discover and innovate. But a little more than a year ago, as I boarded space shuttle Endeavour on its final voyage into space, my fellow astronauts and I were left to ask, "What's next?" in a much different tone. President Obama has made some tough decisions to answer that question. He has a forward-looking plan for sustainable space exploration and innovation that extends the life of the International Space Station.
Is Texas starting to get serious about the SpaceX opportunity?
Eric Berger - Houston Chronicle's SciGuy
Last month Elon Musk told me Texas hasn’t been doing much to entice his company to build a spaceport near Brownsville. “There’s been a lot of good action by the authorities in the Brownsville area; there’s not been that much at the state level, and we’d certainly appreciate more from the state level,” Musk said at the time. I reported it, and afterward I was told that state officials were miffed because they have been working with SpaceX to get a deal done.
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COMPLETE STORIES
Astronauts open hatch, enter Dragon capsule
William Harwood - CBS News
Running well ahead of schedule,the International Space Station's crew opened hatches between the Harmony module and the newly arrived SpaceX Dragon cargo ship early Saturday to kick off a busy few days of work to unload about a half ton of supplies and equipment.
Wearing goggles and filter masks to protect against any floating contaminants that might be present -- a routine precaution when visiting cargo craft arrive -- flight engineer Donald Pettit and Expedition 31 commander Oleg Kononenko cracked open the hatch and floated inside at 5:53 a.m. EDT (GMT-4).
The Dragon cargo ship, making the second of two planned test flights, arrived at the space station Friday, four days after launch from Cape Canaveral. It is the first U.S. spacecraft to visit the International Space Station since the shuttle was retired last summer and the first commercially developed vehicle to attempt a linkup with the orbital lab complex.
"There was no sign of any kind of FOD (foreign object debris) floating around in the atmosphere inside," Pettit radioed mission control in Houston a few minutes after completing an initial inspection. "It kind of reminds me of the cargo capability that I could put in the back of my pickup truck. And the smell inside smells like a brand new car."
SpaceX holds a $1.6 billion contract to to launch at least 12 Dragon missions to the space station to deliver some 44,000 pounds of equipment and supplies. Another company, Orbital Sciences, holds a $1.9 billion contract for eight missions using that company's Cygnus spacecraft, scheduled for its first test flight later this year.
For its space station test flight, the Dragon carried a relatively light load of lower-priority items, including 674 pounds of food and crew provisions; 46 pounds of science hardware and equipment; 271 pounds of cargo bags needed for future flights; and 22 pounds of computer equipment. For routine space station delivery missions, the spacecraft will be able to carry six-and-a-half tons of pressurized and unpressurized cargo.
The station fliers will have less than a week to unload the Dragon before the always changing angle between the sun and the space station's orbit results in higher-than-allowable temperatures. The Dragon spacecraft will be detached from the station May 31.
Unlike Russian, Japanese and European Space Agency cargo craft, the SpaceX Dragon is equipped with a heat shield and parachutes for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean just off the coast of California. Since the shuttle's retirement, NASA has not had a way to get experiment samples, broken equipment and other gear back to Earth. The Dragon spacecraft will restore that lost capability.
For its first return from space, the capsule will be carrying 315 pounds of crew items, 205 pounds of experiment hardware, 760 pounds of space station system components and 86 pounds of spacewalk hardware. For routine resupply missions, the Dragon can return more than two-and-a-half tons of material.
NASA astronauts open SpaceX capsule hatch and begin unloading cargo
W.J. Hennigan - Los Angeles Times
Less than 24 hours after a historic docking, astronauts aboard the International Space Station clambered into SpaceX's unmanned Dragon spacecraft and began unloading supplies that were packed inside.
Wearing oxygen masks as a precaution, the astronauts opened the hatch, slid the door open, and took delivery of the 1,014 pounds of food, water and clothing aboard Dragon.
"Like the smell of a brand new car," said NASA astronaut Don Pettit, after going inside.
Live coverage of the hatch opening, which included some of the first video footage from inside the cone-shaped Dragon, started Saturday shortly before 3 a.m PDT on the Hawthorne company's website and NASA TV.
Delivering cargo wasn't SpaceX's key mission -- the space station is well-provisioned. The main purpose was to demonstrate that the Dragon space capsule could rendezvous with the $100-billion orbiting outpost and link up with the space station's onboard computers.
Those goals were achieved when the Dragon docked with the space station at 9:02 a.m. PDT on Friday. It marked the first time a privately built and operated space capsule had done so.
Not only was it a milestone for SpaceX, it could also indicate a potential seismic shift for U.S. spaceflight, which for more than half a century has been the province of governments and large, entrenched aerospace firms.
SpaceX, offically named Space Exploration Technologies Corp., built its Dragon capsule and the Falcon 9 rocket that lifted it into orbit on its own. By contrast, the overall design of NASA's previous spacecraft vehicles and their missions were tightly controlled by the government and contracted to aerospace giants.
SpaceX, with about 1,800 employees, has received nearly $400 million in seed money from NASA and has a $1.6-billion contract to haul cargo in 12 flights to the space station for the agency.
Now that the U.S. fleet of space shuttles has been retired, NASA's plan is to outsource space station missions to privately funded companies. If NASA deems the current test mission successful, SpaceX will begin fulfilling the cargo-carrying contract later this year.
In the current mission, which began early Tuesday morning with a launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., the Dragon is slated to stay at the space station until Thursday.
Once released from the space station, the craft should make its way back to Earth and deploy parachutes to slow its descent after entering the atmosphere.
It's set to splash down Thursday in the Pacific Ocean hundreds of miles west of Southern California.
Space station crew opens door to commercial spaceship
Stephen Clark – SpaceflightNow.com
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station opened the door on the lab's first commercial resupply craft Saturday, accessing more than 1,000 pounds of food, clothing and experiments stowed inside.
But one of the most vital functions of the privately-owned cargo ship - its ability to safely return space station equipment to Earth - is yet to be demonstrated.
The space station's Expedition 31 crew opened Dragon's hatch Saturday at 5:53 a.m. EDT (0953 GMT), and the astronauts plan to spend 25 hours removing the craft's supply cache and installing equipment tagged for shipment back to Earth.
"I spent quite a bit of time poking around in here this morning just looking at the engineering and the layout, and I'm very pleased," said Don Pettit, a NASA flight engineer living aboard the space station. "It looks like it carries about as much cargo as I could put in my pickup truck."
Pettit was at the controls of the station's robotic arm Friday when it grappled Dragon after a cautious laser-guided rendezvous with the outpost.
Most of the crew's cargo transfer duties will not begin until Monday, according to Holly Ridings, NASA's lead space station flight director for the Dragon mission.
"We are going to give our crew some time off," Ridings said. "They've been working very hard over the last couple of days, so we're going to give them some time off over the weekend. Then Monday and Tuesday are very big cargo days on the space station."
Pettit, Andre Kuipers, and Joe Acaba will rotate time removing and adding cargo in the Dragon spacecraft.
None of Dragon's payloads are deemed essential for the space station by NASA officials. The ongoing mission is a test flight to prove the Dragon spacecraft is ready for regular cargo deliveries to the complex, which could begin as soon as September.
Engineers packed the commercial spaceship with 1,146 pounds of equipment and supplies before Dragon's launch, taking advantage of the test mission to supplement cargo dispatched to the space station on other flights.
"We heard that there might be a little crew care package in here with some goodies in it, and we don't know what they're going to be," Pettit said in a news conference from inside the Dragon spacecraft. "It's kind of fun to keep that as a surprise just because it's nice to get a surprise every once in a while from mother Earth."
The cargo includes enough food for 162 crew meals, clothing, and pantry items. A package of patches, pins and other mementos is also stowed aboard Dragon to commemorate the historic mission.
The crew provisions account for 674 pounds of Dragon's payload.
The mission delivered a commercial NanoRacks experiment module with student experiments investigating microbial growth, water purification, and other pursuits.
Astronauts will also unload ice bricks and cargo bags carried inside Dragon for future transfers of experiments and equipment. The craft also contains computer supplies, such as a laptop, batteries, and power supply cables, according to NASA.
"It looks like it carries about as much cargo as I could put in my pickup truck," Pettit said.
A key capability of Dragon not demonstrated on this flight is transporting bulky exposed hardware and research payloads to the station. NASA plans to launch unpressurized cargo in Dragon's trunk section on some of the ship's 12 future flights to the complex.
The external cargo and spare parts would be mounted in the future on the outside of the station for staging in case of equipment failures.
The Dragon capsule will depart the space station and splash down in the Pacific Ocean on May 31, becoming the first robotic vehicle to return from the complex and land on Earth's surface intact.
Russia's Progress resupply craft, Europe's Automated Transfer Vehicle, and Japan's HTV cargo ship are all disposable. They burn up in Earth's atmosphere during re-entry.
Another commercial logistics freighter - the Cygnus spacecraft being developed by Orbital Sciences Corp. - will also be destroyed in a fiery re-entry and the end of its missions.
"Dragon is really the main means of carrying cargo back from the space station," said Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder, CEO, and chief designer.
Taking advantage of Dragon's cargo return capacity, the space station crew will tuck 1,455 pounds of payloads into the craft's cabin for landing.
Items selected to return home include a water filtration bed, a pump from the station's urine recycling system, water containers, and a multiplexer for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
Dragon will return hardware from several experiments on the space station focusing on planet research, liquid polymers, alloy materials.
The astronauts will also store unneeded spacesuit components inside Dragon for landing.
Learn more about Dragon's cargo on the trip to and from the space station.
Future Dragon missions will haul up to 5,500 pounds of equipment on the trip home.
"It will be great to have significant payload down capability once again," said Don Pettit, a space station flight engineer. "Everybody talks about getting payload up to station, but one of thing that's sorely missing in the wake of the shuttle retirement is getting payload back down. We have all kinds of useful things that we want to get back down to Earth but currently don't really have a way to get them back down."
The space shuttle could return exposed cargo in its payload bay, and shuttles launched and landed with pressurized logistics modules to bring back experiment samples, broken parts, trash, and other gear from the space station.
Dragon is only able to land with cargo packed in bags or containers inside the ship's pressurized compartment, but it can return valuable frozen experiment samples and hardware needing repairs. The craft's trunk separates before re-entry and burns up in the atmosphere.
"Currently, we have no way to get our frozen samples back," Pettit said. "Crucial to the life science experiments that we are doing on space station, particularly the human physiology experiments, we have blood, urine, and spit samples, we have all these things frozen in our freezers. These samples have to remain frozen all the way to the laboratory to where they're going to be analyzed. Currently, Dragon will be the only way to get these samples back to Earth, and that will allow the science behind all our human physiology [experiments] to continue."
Astronauts enter world's 1st private supply ship
Marcia Dunn - Associated Press
Space station astronauts floated into the Dragon on Saturday, a day after its heralded arrival as the world's first commercial supply ship.
NASA astronaut Donald Pettit, the first one inside the docked capsule, said the Dragon looks like it carries about as much cargo as his pickup truck back home in Houston. It has the smell of a brand new car, he added.
"I spent quite a bit of time poking around in here this morning, just looking at the engineering and the layout, and I'm very pleased," Pettit said from the brilliant white compartment.
To protect against possible debris, Pettit wore goggles, a mask and a caver's light as he slid open the hatch of the newest addition to the International Space Station. The complex sailed 250 miles above the Tasman Sea, just west of New Zealand, as he and his crewmates made their grand entrance. The atmosphere was clean; no dirt or other particles were floating around.
"This event isn't just a simple door opening between two spacecraft — it opens the door to a future in which U.S. industry can and will deliver huge benefits for U.S. space exploration," the Space Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group, said in a statement.
The California-based SpaceX — formally Space Exploration Technologies Corp. — is the first private company to send a vessel to the space station. It's run by Elon Musk, a billionaire who helped create PayPal and founded the electric car company Tesla Motors.
Now that the space shuttles are retired, NASA is handing over orbital delivery work to American business in order to focus on bigger and better objectives, such as getting astronauts to asteroids and Mars. The space agency hopes astronaut ferry trips will follow soon; SpaceX contends its Dragons could be carrying space station astronauts up and down within three or four years.
Flight controllers were ecstatic to be at the cusp of this new commercial era.
"It's great to see you guys inside Dragon. It looks great," Mission Control radioed.
The six space station residents have until the middle of next week to unload Dragon's groceries and refill the capsule with science experiments and equipment for return to Earth. Unlike all the other cargo ships that fly to the orbiting lab, the Dragon is designed for safe re-entry. It will be freed on Thursday and aim for a Pacific splashdown.
The Dragon contains 1,000 pounds of food, clothes, batteries and other provisions. It will bring back 1,400 pounds' worth of gear.
Until now, only major governments have launched cargo ships to the space station. Russia, Japan and Europe will keep providing supplies, and Russia will continue to sell rocket rides to U.S. astronauts until SpaceX or other companies are ready to take over. Several American enterprises are competing for the honor.
Pettit noted that the Dragon — 19 feet tall and 12 feet wide — is roomier than the Russian Soyuz spacecraft he rode up in.
"Flying up in a human-rated Dragon is not going to be an issue," he assured reporters during a news conference.
The unmanned bell-shaped capsule was launched Tuesday from Cape Canaveral aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Pettit used the space station's robot arm Friday to snare the craft.
During Saturday's news conference, Pettit played down his role in the historic event. He noted that the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, which opened up America's Western frontier, was commemorated by the pounding of a golden spike.
"This is kind of the equivalent of the golden spike," he said. "And one other interesting detail — nobody remembers who pounded that golden spike in. The important thing is to remember that the railroad was completed and was now open for use."
Success or failure of the new commercial space effort — the cornerstone of President Barack Obama's vision for NASA — does not hinge on a single mission but rather many missions over many years, Pettit stressed.
"Commercial spaceflight will blossom due to its own merits," he said.
Astronauts float inside SpaceX Dragon capsule
Irene Klotz - Reuters
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station opened the hatch and floated inside a Space Exploration Technologies' Dragon capsule on Saturday, the first privately owned spaceship to reach the orbital outpost, NASA said.
Running ahead of schedule, station commander Oleg Kononenko and flight engineer Don Pettit opened the hatch to Dragon just before 6 a.m. EDT (1000 GMT), NASA mission commentator Josh Byerly reported from Mission Control in Houston.
The bell-shaped capsule, which was making its second test flight, arrived at the space station on Friday.
The crew wore protective masks and goggles, but the interior of Dragon, which is 350 cubic feet (10 cubic meters), about the size of a large walk-in closet, proved clean.
"There was no sign of any kind of (debris) floating around," Pettit radioed to Mission Control, adding that Dragon "smells like a brand new car."
"It looks like it carries about as much cargo as I could put in my pickup truck," Pettit later told reporters during an in-flight press conference.
"There's not enough room in here to hold a barn dance, but for transportation of crew up and down through Earth's atmosphere and into space, which is a rather short period of time, there's plenty of room in here for the envisioned crew," Pettit said.
Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, is working on a seven-passenger version of Dragon, which could be ready for test flights in 2015.
The capsule at the space station carries about 1,200 pounds (544 kg) of food and other supplies for the station, all non-essential items because NASA and SpaceX did not know beforehand if it would actually make it to the station.
Following Tuesday's launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, Dragon had to demonstrate that it could be commanded and controlled by operators on the ground as well as by the orbiting space station crew.
Dragon and SpaceX mission control in Hawthorne, California, aced two days of precision flying and systems tests, clearing the way for Dragon to fly within reach of the station's 58-foot (17.7 meter) robot arm on Friday.
BERTHING PORT
Astronauts snared the capsule at 9:56 a.m. EDT (1356 GMT) Friday as the two spacecraft zoomed around the planet at 17,500 mph (28,164 kilometers per hour). It was anchored into a berthing port on the station's Harmony connecting node a few hours later.
"You made history today and it firmly locked us into place and locked the future direction of the American space program in place," NASA administrator Charlie Bolden radioed to the crew later on Friday.
NASA's use of commercial spaceships to fly cargo - and eventually astronauts - to and from the station will ""revolutionize the way we carry out space exploration," Bolden added.
SpaceX and a second company, Orbital Sciences Corp, hold NASA contracts worth a combined $3.5 billion to fly cargo to the station.
Orbital plans to debut its Antares rocket and Cygnus capsule later this year.
NASA is reviewing proposals from at least four firms, including SpaceX, seeking funding under a related program to develop spaceships for flying astronauts as well. Awards are expected in August.
Since the retirement of the space shuttles last year, the United States is dependent on Russia to fly crews to the station, a $100 billion project of 15 nations. It hopes to break the Russian monopoly, which costs NASA about $400 million a year, in 2017.
Once unloaded, Dragon will be filled with about 1,300 pounds (590 kg) of equipment and science gear that need a ride back to Earth - the first big return load since the final shuttle flight last July.
Dragon is due to depart the station on Thursday and splash down in the Pacific Ocean about 250 miles off the coast of southern California later that day.
ISS crew sees history, promise in Dragon
James Dean - Florida Today
Astronauts on board the International Space Station are enjoying their first look -- and smell -- of the newly arrived Dragon capsule after opening the hatch this morning.
Astronauts on board the International Space Station are enjoying their first look -- and smell -- of the newly arrived Dragon capsule after opening the hatch this morning.
Don Pettit said the capsule smelled like a new car and looked to be filled with about as much cargo as he could fit in his pickup truck.
For historical significance, Pettit likened the arrival of the first commercial spacecraft at the station to completion of the transcontinental railroad with the hammering of a golden spike.
"This is kind of the equivalent of the golden spike," Pettit said during a space-to-ground news conference this morning.
The six-person Expedition 31 crew also includes Joe Acaba, who taught science at Melbourne High for a year before becoming an astronaut, and just arrived at the station about a week ago.
Acaba said it was "phenomenal" watching the Dragon approach the orbiting research complex and could imagine the capsule eventually carrying crews.
"I think we would feel very comfortable in a human-rated vehicle just like this one," he said.
Pettit and station commander Oleg Kononenko opened Dragon's hatch just before 6 a.m. Eastern time today.
They plan to begin unloading about 1,000 pounds of cargo on Monday, and haven't yet opened any crew care packages.
NASA and SpaceX expect Dragon to depart Thursday for a splashdown in the Pacific that morning.
Earlier report.
The hatch is open on the first commercial spacecraft to visit the International Space Station.
“The smell inside smells like a brand new car,” NASA astronaut Don Pettit said after floating inside SpaceX’s Dragon capsule this morning.
Pettit swung open the hatch for the first time in space at 5:53 a.m. EDT as the station flew 253 miles above Auckland, New Zealand.
He and Expedition 31 commander Oleg Kononenko entered the Dragon wearing safety goggles and a mask as a precaution in case dust or debris were loose in microgravity.
Once safely inside, they offered thumbs-up signs.
Pettit said the capsule reminded him of a pickup truck’s cargo capability.
Dragon on Friday became the first private spacecraft to berth at the station, three days after launching from Cape Canaveral on a Falcon 9 rocket.
The station crew will spend about 25 hours unpacking the 1,000 pounds of clothing delivered, and repacking it with items for return to Earth on Thursday.
SpaceX: Space Station crew likes what it sees in new transport vehicle
Pete Spotts - Christian Science Monitor
The crew of the International Space Station got its first look at the inside of its newest visitor – Space Exploration Technologies Corporation's Dragon cargo ship – Saturday morning and pronounced it a keeper.
The craft made aerospace history Friday by becoming the first commercially built and operated spacecraft to rendezvous and dock with another spacecraft on orbit.
“I spent quite a bit of time poking around in here this morning looking at the engineering and the layout, and I'm very pleased,” observes Don Pettit, a space station flight engineer and the crew member who guided the station's robotic arm as it grappled the craft for docking Friday morning.
SpaceX developed the Dragon to carry cargo and eventually crew, and based on his initial inspection of the craft's interior, riding in a human-rated Dragon “is not going to be an issue,” he said.
The mission began with a flawless launch May 22 from a pad at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The crew opened the hatch to the cargo craft at 5:53 Eastern Daylight Time Saturday.
This mission, which is slated to end with Dragon's return to Earth May 31, is a demonstration flight. It consists of a final set of tests the craft and its controllers must pass in order to begin delivering on a $1.6 billion contract SpaceX has with NASA to carry cargo to and from the station between now and 2015.
Speaking from within what would be the Dragon's relatively spacious cabin as a capsule for humans, Dr. Petitt acknowledged that in the midst of the grab-and-dock process Friday, he and his colleagues, Andre Kuipers, a European Space Agency crew member, and NASA's Joe Acaba didn't have much time to contemplate the mission's place in history.
With an additional 24 hours to think about it, however, Petitt likened the event to the Golden Spike that symbolized the final link joining eastbound and westbound segments of the first transcontinental railroad line. The spike was driven into that last wooden rail tie on May 10, 1869.
“This is kind of the equivalent of the Golden Spike,” he said
“Nobody remembers who pounded that spike in,” he added, injecting some humility into the docking event. “The important thing is that the railroad was completed,” providing the initial infrastructure for widespread settlement of the American West.
On Sunday, the crew is scheduled to begin unpacking Dragon, which arrived with just over 1,000 pounds of clothing, food, and other items the crew needs. In addition, it's said to carry a surprise care package – something crew members look forward to with each arriving resupply flight.
After his informal inspection of Dragon's interior Saturday, Petitt noted that it carried about as much cargo as his pick-up truck. The craft consists of two segments – the pressurized capsule and an unpressurized “trunk” that doubles as the segment mating the capsule to the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket at launch. SpaceX has designed an extended trunk for the craft.
Dragon is designed to loft up to 6 metric tons of cargo – somewhat less than Europe's automated transfer vehicle and about the same as Japan's cargo craft. Unlike these, however, which burn up on reentry, Dragon can return with up to 3 metric tons of hardware, experiment samples, and space-station components NASA might want to analyze or refurbish.
That capacity could increase if NASA needed it, said SpaceX founder and chief designer Elon Musk during a post-docking press briefing late Friday morning. SpaceX would just build a longer trunk, he said.
Indeed, returning cargo is one of the features Dragon is demonstrating on this mission. It is slated to return to Earth – splashing down in the Pacific May 31 – with about 1,400 pounds of “down mass,” including some space station components NASA wants to spruce up and return to the orbiting outpost. It's an important capability, NASA officials have noted. While a returning Russian Soyuz craft can carry small amounts of cargo from the station, until now, no other craft serving the station has the ability to bring hefty payloads back. That was the space shuttle's role.
Cargo craft built by Japan and Europe are flying only a combined seven missions between now and 2015, when the final Japanese mission launches. SpaceX and a second company, Orbital Science Corporation, are slated to fly 20 resupply missions through 2015, turning them into the main lifelines between Earth and the station, NASA officials say.
SpaceX’s Dragon capsule docks with international space station
Brian Vastag - Washington Post
With a near-flawless docking on Friday, start-up rocket company SpaceX achieved what only big governments have to date: It launched a mission to the international space station.
The moment marked a pivot point in U.S. space ambitions, away from total NASA control and toward creative private enterprise. While NASA furnished seed money and technical advice, SpaceX engineers designed, built, launched and drove the white gumdrop-shaped Dragon capsule until the final moments.
While the docking marked a milestone, it was more a policy win than a technical achievement: Shooting stuff into space has been routine for 50 years, and the Dragon carried no astronauts. That is a bigger mission that SpaceX and other U.S. companies are now racing toward.
“Launching cargo, difficult as it is, is much less difficult than launching humans,” said NASA astronaut Clayton Anderson, who spent five months on the space station in 2007. “SpaceX still has some challenges to get through.”
But the docking did help validate a space policy that’s drawn scorn and hope. Former and current astronauts, legislators and policymakers have questioned whether the private sector can launch a vehicle with brute force and then delicately pirouette it around a football-field-size orbiting outpost.
SpaceX controllers did both this week and made it look easy.
“It’s been a remarkable ride,” Michael Suffredini, NASA’s space station manager, said shortly after Dragon’s docking.
After a two-hour delay to fix a balky laser range finder on Dragon, two station astronauts — American Don Pettit and Dutchman Andre Kuipers — lassoed the capsule with a giant robotic arm at 9:56 a.m.
“Looks like we’ve got us a dragon by the tail,” Pettit quipped from 250 miles above Australia.
Cheers erupted in two mission control rooms — at NASA in Houston and SpaceX headquarters near Los Angeles.
Video feeds showed the casually dressed SpaceX team high-fiving and hugging. Elon Musk, the company’s usually voluble founder, later said he had no words for the “moment of elation.”
Two hours later, the station astronauts snuggled Dragon into a docking port.
Mission nearly complete.
“In my 20 years with NASA, rarely did things go that smoothly,” said Michael Lopez-Alegria, a former space station commander and president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, an industry group. “And they never go that smoothly the very first time.”
He added, “I’m not sure I would’ve put money on it two weeks ago.”
He had reason to worry. Conceived in 2006 as a space shuttle replacement, NASA’s commercial spaceflight program is three years behind schedule. The SpaceX mission was repeatedly delayed since last year, most recently Saturday, when the Falcon 9 rocket’s engines fired and then squelched on the launchpad because of a bad valve.
But on Tuesday, the rocket finally soared atop an arc of orange. It was the second SpaceX mission for the Dragon capsule. In December 2010, a Dragon orbited the Earth and splashed down off the California coast.
On Friday, Musk sat in front of that first, scorched Dragon as SpaceX workers chanted his name, shouting, “We love Elon!”
For weeks, the Internet millionaire had been scaling back expectations, saying this was a test flight, a shake-down mission.
But at a post-docking news briefing, Musk beamed and repeated his ambition to fly people to Mars and beyond. “This was a crucial step,” he said, toward spreading humanity to other planets. “The chance of that just went up dramatically.”
While more circumspect, NASA and White House officials also heralded the day.
Presidential science adviser John P. Holdren, in a statement, called the moment “an achievement of historic scientific and technological significance” and “a key milepost in President Obama’s vision for America’s continued leadership in space.”
NASA administrator Charles F. Bolden Jr., attending the International Space Development Conference in Washington, watched on a video screen and exclaimed, “We have berthed!”
Friday’s success edges SpaceX closer to sending astronauts back into orbit from American soil. After retiring its space shuttles last year, NASA now relies on Russia to ferry astronauts to and from the station — at $63 million a seat. Last year, the agency funded four U.S. companies, including SpaceX, to build a space vehicle safe enough for humans.
But NASA and the Obama administration are battling Congress over funding. The administration wants $800 million for the commercial crew program next year, but the House of Representatives wants to cut that nearly in half. NASA’s Bolden has vehemently pushed back.
On Friday, Musk said that SpaceX could be ready to fly people into space by 2015.
But Scott Pace, a space policy expert at George Washington University and an adviser to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, said the company first needs a track record. “They need to fly [cargo] six or seven times consecutively,” he said.
With nearly 2,000 employees, SpaceX is ramping up production to fulfill $4 billion in contracts, with NASA just one of their customers. The company is young — the average employee age is 30 — and Musk said he’s picked a team that balances “the wisdom of age with the vibrancy of youth.”
Their next mission — the first of 12 deliveries to the station — is slated for September.
Meanwhile, a local company, Orbital Sciences of Dulles, is preparing a new launchpad on Wallops Island, Va., to send its new cargo carrier to the space station late this year.
The two companies are slated to make the bulk of cargo runs in the future to the station, which is now supplied by Russia, Japan and the European Union.
Along with food, water and computers, the Dragon carried a tiny cargo that began its journey in the District: two vials with a waste-purifying experiment designed by eighth-graders at Stuart-Hobson Middle School. Station astronauts will snap the vials like glow sticks, mingling bacillus bacteria with egg white.
Kyra Smith, the 14-year-old D.C. Public Schools student who conceived the experiment, said, “I’m interested in environmental conservation, so I thought astronauts that go up into the space station could reuse water and save space on their rockets.” If her experiment works, the bacteria will clear out the egg white — which is standing in for human waste. The experiment is one of 15 on the Dragon chosen from among 800 schools.
The program was started by the nonprofit National Center for Earth and Space Science Education in Capitol Heights to give students experience running experiments.
On Thursday, Dragon is scheduled to depart the station, carrying Smith’s vials along with frozen blood and urine from astronaut biology experiments and old spacesuit parts. If all goes well, it will splash down in the Pacific later that day.
Dragon attached to space station
William Harwood - CBS News
In a moment of high drama on the high frontier, flight engineer Donald Pettit, operating the International Space Station's robot arm, reached out and locked onto a commercial cargo ship early Friday after a complex rendezvous, a final sequence of approach-and-retreat test maneuvers and quick work to adjust critical sensors that were getting fooled by reflections from a Japanese research module.
The last-minute hiccups were just that, nerve-wracking but relatively minor adjustments to correct for the real-world performance of complex laser and infrared imagers used to compute the Dragon cargo ship's velocity and distance from the station.
But like everything in the world of manned spaceflight, where the stakes are high and the margins for error small, flight controllers in Houston and at SpaceX's Hawthorne, Calif., control center took their time, inserting additional checks to make sure everything was working properly.
Now running well behind schedule, flight controllers left it up to Pettit as to whether he felt comfortable grappling the spacecraft in orbital darkness or would prefer delaying to the next daylight pass depending on lighting conditions. When all was said and done, the crew was about two hours behind schedule when the Dragon completed its approach, halting at a designated capture point 30 feet directly below the lab complex.
One of its two laser range finders, or LIDARS, had been taken off line by that point because of suspect data, but the spacecraft was deemed healthy enough to continue the approach.
As the huge space station and the diminutive cargo craft flew in tandem at 5 miles per second, Pettit, working inside the lab's multi-window cupola module, decided to press ahead in orbital darkness, guiding the arm's latching end effector onto a grapple fixture on the side of the cargo ship at 9:56 a.m. EDT (GMT-4).
Internal snares were then tightened to secure the spacecraft to the arm, completing a rendezvous that began with Dragon's launch Tuesday from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
"Capture is confirmed!" NASA's mission control commentator, Josh Byerly, said as flight controllers burst into applause.
"Congratulations on a wonderful capture, you've made a lot of folks happy down here, over in Hawthorne and right here in Houston," astronaut Megan Behnken radioed from Houston. "Great job, guys."
"Houston, station, it looks like we've got us a dragon by the tail," Pettit radioed, then joked: "We're thinking this sim went really well, we're ready to turn it around and do it for real."
European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers then took over robot arm operations while Pettit, using binoculars, inspected the common berthing mechanism components on the Dragon and the Harmony module to make sure there were no micrometeoroid impacts or other problems that would prevent an airtight seal when the spacecraft was locked into place. The inspections and maneuvers to align the two docking mechanisms took about two hours to complete.
Just before noon, the crew was given permission to press ahead with "first stage capture," driving home motorized bolts in the CBM interface to firmly lock the cargo ship to its port on the space station. The two-step process was completed at 12:02 p.m.
Space founder and chief designer Elon Musk was almost at a loss for words during a post-berthing news conference.
"This has really been the culmination of an enormous amount of work by the SpaceX team in partnership with NASA, and we're incredibly excited," he said from the company's Hawthorne plant, surrounded by cheering employees. "Really, I don't have words enough to express the level of excitement and elation we feel here at SpaceX for having this work.
"There's so much that could have gone wrong, and it went right. We were able to overcome some last-minute issues with some fast thinking at NASA mission control and SpaceX mission control and got it there. It's just a fantastic day, a great day for the country and for the world. This really is, I think, going to be recognized as a significantly historical step forward in space travel. Hopefully the first of many to come."
If all goes well, the crew will open hatches and float into the Dragon capsule on Saturday. For its initial visit, the spacecraft is carrying nearly 1,150 pounds of equipment and supplies: 674 pounds of food and crew provisions; 46 pounds of science hardware and equipment; 271 pounds of cargo bags needed for future flights; and 22 pounds of computer equipment.
But the cargo was almost incidental. The overriding goal was to demonstrate the spacecraft's readiness to begin routine resupply missions as a commercial enterprise.
"I can't tell you how proud we are to have been part of this historic moment," said space station Program Manager Mike Suffredini. "Many times as the manager of this program I have stood in front of you and spoken about historical moments, things that we have done that have never been done before, and this rates right at the top."
Michael Lopez-Alegria, a former space station commander who now serves as president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, called the rendezvous and capture "truly a momentous accomplishment for SpaceX and for the industry. The entire team at SpaceX should be commended for their commitment and skill, and thanked for their contribution to restoring U.S. access to the space station."
SpaceX plans to begin regularly scheduled logistics flights to the space station later this year under a $1.6 billion contract with NASA that calls for at least 12 missions and the delivery of 44,000 pounds of cargo and supplies. A second company, Orbital Sciences, holds a $1.9 billion contract for eight missions to deliver the same amount of cargo.
The goal is to replace the cargo delivery capability that was lost with the space shuttle's retirement. While the station currently is supplied by Russian, European and Japanese cargo ships, the European Space Agency is only funding five Automated Transfer Vehicles and Japan's HTV is expected to see limited use after seven missions.
The SpaceX and Orbital cargo craft "will do the lion's share of the work necessary to keep space station flying," said Suffredini. "And this is also paving the way to the work that NASA's been doing with many of the folks in industry to provide a similar service for crew transportation. We will almost rely exclusively on commercial provided services in the out years if everything proceeds according to the plan today.
Three test flights were initially envisioned by NASA and SpaceX under a separate contract valued at up to $396 million. After the maiden two-orbit flight of a Dragon capsule in 2010, SpaceX lobbied to combine the second and third test flights into a single mission, with a close approach Thursday to test guidance and control systems and the final rendezvous today.
"This is pretty tricky," Musk said before launch. "The space station is zooming around the Earth very 90 minutes and it's going 17,000 miles an hour. So you've got to launch up there, you've got to rendezvous and be tracking space station to within inches, really, and this is a thing that's going 12 times faster than the bullet from an assault rifle. So it's hard."
But the NASA-SpaceX team made it look easy, with a flawless launch Tuesday, a smooth approach to the space station Wednesday and a successful series of tests Thursday during a close-approach fly under to verify the performance of the cargo ship's flight control system.
The rendezvous Friday required a stepwise approach to hold points 1.5 miles and .9 miles directly below the station. The capsule then moved up to a point just 820 feet below the lab for another series of controllability tests, advancing, retreating and holding in place on command.
With the Dragon stationkeeping about 720 feet below the space station, NASA cleared SpaceX to continue the approach up the "r-bar," or radius vector, an imaginary line between the station and the center of the Earth. The original flight plan called for a brief stop at 100 feet before a final push to the robot arm capture point just 30 feet below the lab complex.
But flight controllers wanted additional time to monitor the output of an infrared video system used in concert with a LIDAR laser ranging system to help the Dragon's flight computers calculate its distance from the station and its closure rate. Additional holds were ordered to make sure everything was working properly and even though one LIDAR was taken out of the control loop because of suspect data, the ship was healthy enough to proceed.
"There were definitely some close moments where we potentially could have called an abort and in fact, there were moments where we had to retreat a little bit just to reassess the situation," Musk said. "We had to make some last-minute adjustments, in particular narrowing the field of view of the LIDAR. Fortunately, those worked. In very close cooperation with NASA mission control we worked out a solution that allowed us to go in and get grappled by the arm and berthed."
As it now stands, Dragon will remained docked until May 31. At that point, the station's robot arm will unberth the capsule and then release it. Unlike all other Russian, European and Japanese cargo ships servicing the International Space Station, the Dragon is equipped with a heat shield and parachutes for an ocean splashdown off the coast of California.
SpaceX Dragon docks with Space Station
Success for private enterprise in orbit
Ned Potter - ABC News
“Looks like we’ve got a Dragon by the tail,” said NASA astronaut Don Pettit.
The SpaceX Dragon capsule safely berthed to the International Space Station today, greeted by cheers in mission control and pronouncements about how a new era is beginning in orbit.
The Dragon did something that has happened dozens of times before — made a successful rendezvous with the space station to deliver supplies. But it’s the first privately-owned spacecraft to make the trip.
“It’s been a long time coming,” said Mike Suffredini, NASA’s space station program manager, this afternoon. “I can’t tell you how proud we are to have been a part of this historic moment.”
“We’re incredibly excited,” said Elon Musk, the founder and head of SpaceX. “There’s so much that could have gone wrong and didn’t.”
NASA hopes private American companies will inexpensively deliver supplies, and eventually astronauts, to the station, something the U.S. has been unable to do without foreign help since the space shuttles were retired last year.
The berthing was done achingly slowly — standard procedure when two ships fly together in orbit at more than 17,000 miles per hour. Rather than let the Dragon maneuver itself for a docking, astronaut Pettit reached out with the station’s robot arm to grab the approaching ship.
NASA said under current plans, Dragon will remain docked to the space station for unloading until May 31. After undocking, SpaceX will order the ship to re-enter the atmosphere and splash down in the Pacific off the Southern California Coast.
“This is a fantastic thing,” said Musk, surrounded by cheering SpaceX employees in California, “but there are better things to come in the future.”
SpaceX Capsule Joins to Space Station
Andy Pasztor - Wall Street Journal
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. made history Friday by attaching the first private spacecraft to the international space station, a move that ultimately could change the economics and politics of U.S. space exploration.
The unmanned Dragon capsule's halting, painstakingly slow final movements toward the station, where it was grabbed by a robotic arm at 9:56 a.m. Eastern daylight saving time, represents a first-of-its-kind achievement in the annals of space science. Until the Southern California company, known as SpaceX, succeeded in attaching the capsule to the space station, only governmental agencies had attempted such a rendezvous.
The Dragon was bolted to the space station, completing the berthing operation at shortly after noon, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said.
Astronauts Donald Pettit and Andre Kuipers used the space station's flexible, roughly 50-foot mechanical arm to firmly snare the Dragon on the first attempt, after a few hours of maneuvering by the spacecraft. The docking was a complex technical feat that some of the company's champions were skeptical would be achieved on the first try. Friday's final methodical maneuvers turned out to be a fairly smooth process.
The vehicle's arrival was a personal victory for Elon Musk, the closely held company's founder, chief executive and chief designer, who managed to overcome a series of technical and financial crises that had threatened the start-up.
Following Dragon's picture-perfect launch four days earlier. Mr. Musk said this mission set the stage for a new era of space exploration. But at the time, he stressed that there were still major challenges that could derail a docking attempt.
Friday's activities represented a different sort of validation for leaders of NASA, who have used Mr. Musk's company as a prime example of the benefits of outsourcing to private companies the job of delivering cargo, and ultimately astronauts, to the orbiting international laboratory.
Dragon's arrival, capping a flight with remarkably few problems or unexpected wrinkles, made it the first U.S. vehicle of any kind to arrive at the station in about a year, since the retirement of NASA's space shuttles.
Before the linkup, mission controllers spent hours determining that Dragon's clusters of thrusters and sensors were working properly by commanding a series of test maneuvers in which the capsule slowly drifted toward the capsule, gradually retreated and then held steady at a various distances, down to less than 100 feet.
Data from Dragon's thermal imagers was reanalyzed to validate its accuracy. Around 9 a.m. EDT, as the drama's climax neared and the capsule inched closer to the $100 billion space outpost, SpaceX engineers adjusted the operation of other distance-measuring equipment on Dragon.
Improvising, they tweaked part of the radar system to filter out confusing, stray reflections coming back from a certain portion of the space station. In order to see while they worked, company and NASA experts also had to make sure the final attempt to snatch the capsule occurred when the station was passing over an area that had daylight.
Considering that the station weighs about one million pounds and is circling the earth at roughly 17,000 miles an hour, engineers and mission controllers were extremely cautious and slow in ordering approach maneuvers. For space geeks around the world watching the drama play out on NASA's website, the images resembled a super-slow motion videogame.
At an earlier point, as the Dragon capsule and the station streaked over Southern California before dawn, they were still were separated by about 700 feet. Astronaut Kuipers, who was monitoring Dragon's progress from inside the station, calmly told mission controllers: "It looks very stable."
Once the mechanical arm snared Dragon and video confirmed the capture, tension lifted. Astronaut Pettit, who had spent many months practicing the move in simulators and hours before had worried about the level of light to do his work, radioed NASA controllers in Houston with a quip.``It looks like we've got us a dragon by the tail,'' he said.
In barely a decade, Mr. Musk has transformed a bare-bones company with makeshift offices and less than a dozen employees into a thriving enterprise that now runs a state-of-the-art manufacturing complex and employs some 1,700 people around the U.S.
SpaceX, which plans to launch NASA missions from the government's Cape Canaveral space complex in Florida, wants to set up a private launch facility of its own, most likely along the Gulf Coast. Its order book includes more than $1 billion of future satellite launches for commercial operators, foreign government and research outfits. And the Air Force recently moved to make it easier for SpaceX to compete for launches of big military and spy satellites.
The SpaceX chief also has moved into uncharted territory by breaking from the industry's traditional reliance on hiring subcontractors to design and manufacture key systems such as engines. Instead, SpaceX has recruited its own cadre of hard-charging engineers—some lured away from larger rivals—and concentrated on doing most of the work internally.
The company is one of several pursuing NASA funding to help develop private manned spacecraft, intended to transport astronauts into orbit during the second half of this decade. Competitors include closely held XCOR Aerospace, Sierra Nevada Corp. and a start-up run by Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com Inc.
SpaceX "is really shocking a lot of people" with its accomplishments and "willingness to take on tough, risky challenges," according to Lawrence Williams, an industry consultant who until recently was a close aide to Mr. Musk. "Traditional aerospace companies have to figure out a way to adjust, and some already are responding," according to Mr. Williams.
One reaction from larger rivals: they are creating new units dedicated to pursuing commercial contracts, and to promise NASA those operations will be willing to sign fixed-price agreements similar to the transportation services contracts SpaceX accepted years ago,
NASA and SpaceX have predicted that relying on private cargo vehicles and space taxis to carry crews will be less expensive than having the space agency use traditional procurement methods to purchase next-generation rockets and spacecraft. If that holds true, it would deflect much of the congressional criticism directed against SpaceX and other commercial ventures seeking NASA business.
But SpaceX still needs to demonstrate the long-term strength of its business model, according to Howard McCurdy, a space policy expert and professor of public affairs at American University in Washington, D.C. NASA will only realize anticipated cost savings, according to Mr. McCurdy, "if there is a broader commercial market and SpaceX can spread its production costs" across all those orders.
"If it's producing one [rocket] a year, the model simply won't work," according to Mr. McCurdy.
SpaceX Capsule Docks at Space Station
Kenneth Chang - New York Times
High above northwestern Australia, a robotic arm on the International Space Station grabbed onto a cargo capsule floating 10 meters away.
With that simple act, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation of Hawthorne, Calif., or SpaceX, made history as the first private company to send a spacecraft to the space station.
The grab — which NASA refers to as a grapple — occurred at 9:56 a.m. Eastern time on Friday.
“Looks like we’ve got a Dragon by the tail,” said Donald Pettit, the NASA astronaut on the station who was operating the robotic arm, referring to Space X’s Dragon capsule.
SpaceX launched the capsule on top of its Falcon 9 rocket on Tuesday. The company and NASA spent several days conducting tests to check the operations of the Dragon. On Thursday, the Dragon flew 1.5 miles beneath the station to test its communication and navigation systems.
It passed those tests and then looped around the space station to begin its final approach. By design, the approach was slow, with built-in pauses. As part of the testing process, the crew sent commands to the Dragon to stop or temporarily move away, ensuring that Dragon could be safely sent off if something went badly awry.
SpaceX did run into some problems with two navigation sensors, one that took thermal images and one that bounced laser pulses, and that delayed the capture by a couple of hours.
ISS catch of the day: Dragon!
Eric Hand - Nature News
Dragon has become the first private spacecraft to reach the International Space Station. The cargo capsule, built by SpaceX and launched on a Falcon 9 rocket on 22 May, reached the station today just before 10 am Eastern time.
“Looks like we caught a Dragon by the tail,” said astronaut Don Pettit.
After holding in a spot 10 metres away from the station, the capsule and the station plunged into the night-time shadow of the Earth. Mission control decided that it was okay for astronauts to attempt a dramatic night-time capture. Astronauts, using the station’s grappling arm, brought the capsule to a docking (see the Canada-built arm reaching out to grab the capsule moments before capture, after the jump).
The mission is largely symbolic — a sign that can NASA and other government space agencies can transition away from an expensive “cost-plus” procurement model to one where governments can contract for rides and cargo space on space vehicles just like they might for rides on a commercial airline.
Even though the cargo on this flight, both up and down, was planned to be low-risk, Dragon should be carrying down some aluminum alloy rods melted and solidified in a microgravity experiment. And plant scientists won’t have to wait too much longer to get back all the Arabidopsis seedlings stuck in freezers on the ISS.
'New car smell' as space station crew enters Dragon capsule
Melissa Gray - CNN
"Like the smell of a brand-new car" were the words of International Space Station astronaut Don Pettit on Saturday after he carefully opened the hatch and entered the Dragon capsule for his first glimpse inside.
Dragon connected with the station Friday, making history as the first private capsule to reach the orbiting spacecraft.
Pettit opened the hatch at 5:53 a.m. ET with Russian cosmonaut and station commander Oleg Kononenko by his side. The two men, wearing T-shirts, khaki shorts, goggles and masks gave the thumbs up to the camera after they floated inside.
The initial inspection went smoothly and ahead of schedule and the interior looked good, according to SpaceX, the private company that built and operates the Dragon.
Pettit later told reporters in a briefing from space that the interior is roomier than the Russian Soyuz capsule that carried him to the space station. He said "it looks like it carries about as much cargo as I could put in my pickup truck."
Ashes of 'Star Trek' actor on private rocket
Dragon delivered more than 1,000 pounds of cargo, including food, clothing, computer equipment and supplies for science experiments.
After the crew unloads that cargo, they will reload the capsule with experiments and cargo for its return trip to Earth. Dragon is scheduled to splash into the Pacific Ocean several hundred miles west of California on May 31, according to NASA.
Pettit said the crew has packed most of what its plan to send back to Earth, which includes everything from trash to scientific research and experimental samples.
SpaceX Dragon triumph: Only the beginning
Dragon launched Tuesday from Cape Canaveral, Florida, aboard SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. NASA collaborated with SpaceX on every part of the mission and gave final authorization for the flight.
Dragon reached the station Friday and was "captured" by the station's robotic arm just before 10 a.m. ET. Over the next two hours, the crew maneuvered the arm to bring the capsule in to berth and attach it to the station.
The mission, hailed by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden as a step toward a new future of private innovation in the space industry, comes as government funding of the space program decreases.
It also marked the culmination of six years of preparation to bring commercial flights to the space station after the retirement of NASA's space shuttle fleet last year, which leaves the United States with no means of independently sending humans into space. NASA relies on the Russian space agency to ferry U.S. astronauts to orbit.
Without the shuttle, the United States also has limited capabilities to send supplies to the station and bring them back. Dragon fills a need in taking significant payload back and forth, Pettit said.
In December 2008, NASA announced it had chosen SpaceX's Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft to resupply the International Space Station after the shuttle's retirement. The $1.6 billion contract involves a minimum of 12 flights, with an option to order more missions for additional cost, according to SpaceX.
SpaceX was created by PayPal founder Elon Musk and is one of a few of private companies receiving NASA funds to develop the commercial transport of astronauts into space.
Musk has said the commercial program -- with fixed-price, pay-for-performance contracts -- makes fiscal sense for taxpayers and fosters competition among companies on reliability, capability and cost.
Astronaut Joe Acaba, also aboard the space station, called the mission a great first step in the commercialization of spaceflight, and Pettit agreed.
"Commercial spaceflight will blossom due to its own merits, and doesn't really hinge on one mission," Pettit said. "It will hinge on the viability of launching many missions over a long period of time and being able to provide useful commercial goods and services in the low-earth orbit arena."
SpaceX is now developing a heavy-lift rocket with twice the cargo capability of the space shuttle and hopes to build a spacecraft that could carry a crew to Mars.
SpaceX docks with International Space Station: Up next, public travel?
Scott Pelley - CBS News
There was a milestone in space today when a private, unmanned spacecraft owned and operated by an American company docked with the International Space Station.
The capsule is called Dragon by its owner the SpaceX company of California. This is the future since the space shuttle stopped flying last July. The Obama administration turned the shuttle's missions over to private industry.
SpaceX has a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to fly the Dragon on 12 missions to carry cargo to and from the station.
But, SpaceX is just getting started. When CBS News visited their factory recently for "60 Minutes," they were busy measuring a Dragon capsule for seats.
Knuckles were white at the SpaceX mission control center as the robot arm reached out to the capsule. Then, there was euphoria.
The factory outside Los Angeles has 18,000 employees. They build everything from the engines to the rockets to the capsule. The company was launched by Elon Musk, the billionaire co-founder of Paypal.
Dragon can hold seven seats. Garrett Reisman has flown on the Space Shuttle and Space Station for NASA. Now he works for SpaceX.
"If you had a chance to go back in time and work with Howard Hughes when he was creating TWA, if you had a chance to be there at that moment... (to) get in on the ground floor at the beginning of, the dawn of a brand new era, wouldn't you want to do that? I mean, that's why I'm here," Reisman told CBS News.
There are half a dozen private companies competing in a NASA program to develop a manned ship. SpaceX hopes today's docking puts them in the lead.
"Really it's not that big of a leap, to be honest with you," Reisman explained. "We need to make a big leap in safety. We have to make sure that when we put people in there that is absolutely the safest it could be. And I am a big believer that this vehicle will be ten times safer than any spacecraft anybody's every strapped into, that that we will get there."
Fifty years from now, Reisman hopes that people will see this time as the "golden age of space."
"What I'm hoping they say was... this was the point in time where we really figured out how to make this all work, how to make it cost effective and where we made the really true first giant leap in safety and cost effectiveness that allows a commercial space flight infrastructure," he said.
Reisman believes that this could also mean the beginning of space lines. "Like airlines, but for space. Yeah, I'm hoping this is the beginning of that," he said
SpaceX hopes to fly its first private crew in 2015. As luck would have it, today SpaceX event coincides with the 51st anniversary of President Kennedy's speech that set the goal of reaching the moon.
Dragon Capsule Berths To ISS To Set Space Milestone
Mark Carreau - Aviation Week
The SpaceX Dragon capsule rendezvoused with the International Space Station (ISS) May 25, overcoming some late tracking issues to become the first U.S. commercial resupply craft to dock with the six-person orbital science laboratory.
Astronauts Don Pettit, Andre Kuipers and Joe Acaba grappled the unpiloted spacecraft with the station’s 17.6-meter (58-ft.) Canadarm2 at 9:56 a.m. EDT, as Dragon flew in formation 10 meters below. The freighter was berthed at the station’s U.S. segment Harmony module at 12:02 p.m. EDT.
The docking marks a significant milestone for NASA’s six-year-old Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program as well as for the Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX. NASA plans to initiate regular commercial cargo deliveries to the space station with SpaceX later this year. Orbital Sciences Corp., NASA’s second COTS participant, could be close behind with its first station mission.
“Looks like we got us a Dragon by the tail,” Pettit, the Canadarm2 operator, informed Mission Control when capture occurred while the two spacecraft orbited 250 mi. over Australia at more than 17,500 mph.
The final stages of the robot arm capture took longer than anticipated, as the NASA Mission Control team in Houston and SpaceX flight control team in Hawthorne sorted through some tracking discrepancies between Dragon’s thermal imager and lidar guidance systems that surfaced with 250 meters separating the two spacecraft.
As the freighter closed to nearly 30 meters, the lidar locked up on a reflector on the station’s Japanese Kibo module. That prompted a momentary retreat of the capsule to 70 meters, while SpaceX adjusted the lidar to ignore the uninvolved reflector. Subsequently, one of two Dragon lidar trackers failed—leaving the capsule primed to abort the capture operation if there was a second failure.
The nine-day mission was launched early May 22 from Cape Canaveral.
The NASA-led ISS mission management team (MMT) formally approved Dragon’s berthing late May 24. The action followed a review of the day’s “fly under,” the activities earlier in the day that propelled the capsule 1.5 mi. below the station for checkouts of the relative GPS navigation data exchange between the two spacecraft and the ability of the astronauts to slow, stop and command a retreat of the freighter if necessary.
Following the May 24 test, Dragon maneuvered out in front, above and then behind the station in a racetrack pattern while NASA and SpaceX flight control teams and ultimately the MMT reviewed the capsule’s performance. A series of nine major maneuvers and propulsive adjustments brought Dragon to a point 250 meters below the station at 5:22 a.m.
Dragon advanced to 235 meters for a series of “retreat” and “hold” command tests before approaching to 200 meters, then 150 meters to refine the tracking data from the capsule’s infrared imagers and converge them with Lidar readings.
Each of Dragon’s final advances to the 10-meter “capture point” followed a Go/No-Go decision by the control teams.
The astronauts opened Dragon early Saturday to unload slightly more than 1,000 lb. of food, clothing, research equipment, empty cargo containers and computer equipment.
Dragon will be reloaded with nearly 1,400 lb. of crew equipment, station hardware, spacesuit gear and experiment samples for return to Earth.
Currently, Dragon is scheduled to unberth with the help of Canadarm2 and the astronauts on May 31. The capsule is scheduled to reenter the Earth’s atmosphere and aim for a splashdown under parachute in the Pacific Ocean off Southern California at about mid-day.
First commercial cargo ship arrives at space station
Stephen Clark – SpaceflightNow.com
The International Space Station's robotic arm on Friday reached out and snared a cargo carrier built by SpaceX, making history after the privately-built Dragon spacecraft made a cautious laser-guided approach to the complex, becoming the first commercial spaceship to reach the massive scientific research facility.
Astronaut Don Pettit at the controls of the station's Canadian robotic arm grappled the free-floating Dragon spacecraft at 9:56 a.m. EDT (1356 GMT) as it hovered about 30 feet below.
"Looks like we've got a Dragon by the tail," Pettit radioed mission control moments after he locked onto the craft with the space station's 58-foot Canadian robot arm.
Applause broke out in mission control centers in Houston and Hawthorne, Calif., at SpaceX headquarters.
The historic link-up occurred as the space station flew over northwest Australia in a night pass. NASA preferred grappling Dragon in daylight, but the ship's rendezvous took longer than planned, and officials opted to take the first opportunity to capture the spacecraft.
The space station crew moved the Dragon spacecraft to an attach point on the Harmony module, and the capsule was firmly berthed to the complex at 12:02 p.m. EDT (1602 GMT).
The Dragon became the first commercial spaceship to ever reach the space station, and it is the first U.S. spacecraft to visit the outpost since the last space shuttle mission departed in July 2011.
"It's been a long time coming," said Mike Suffredini, NASA's space station program manager. "I can't tell you how proud we are to have been a part of this historic moment."
The rendezvous and arrival at the space station occurred three days after Dragon launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla.
SpaceX developed the Dragon spacecraft with a mix of public and private funding. NASA has paid the California-based company $381 million to date for development of a space station cargo delivery service. SpaceX has spent a total of $1.2 billion since its founding in 2002, with the rest of the financing coming from other contracts and private capital investments.
NASA's strategy after the shuttle's retirement is to turn over regular cargo and crew transportation in low Earth orbit to the private sector, leaving the government to explore deep space and launch missions to asteroids, the moon, and Mars.
SpaceX also has ambitions for commercial voyages to Mars, and Elon Musk, the company's founder and CEO, says his ultimate objective is to make humanity a multi-planetary species.
"The chances of that happening just went up dramatically," Musk said.
SpaceX's next step is outfitting the Dragon spacecraft for human passengers, which Musk said could be done in three years. SpaceX is competing for funding from NASA's commercial crew program, which aims to end U.S. reliance on Russia for astronaut transportation to and from the space station after the retirement of the shuttle.
The ecstasy of NASA and SpaceX officials Friday was culmination of six years of cooperation between the space agency and start-up company. NASA awarded SpaceX the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services agreement in 2006, fostering a public-private partnership leading to Friday's space station arrival.
Dragon's approach to the space station was slow and methodic, including several planned and unplanned pauses to make sure the ship's abort system was operating, its LIDAR laser ranging sensors were working, and its thermal cameras were seeing their target properly.
"There's so much that could have gone wrong, and it went right," Musk said. "We were able to overcome some last-minute issues with some fast thinking at NASA mission control and SpaceX mission control, and we got it there."
Pettit grappled the Dragon spacecraft about two hours later than scheduled, but the delay didn't dampen enthusiasm at SpaceX, where the average of the company's 1,800 employees is about 30 years old.
Speaking from SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne, Musk's press conference was marked by raucous cheers from assembled engineers.
The space station astronauts plan to open the hatch to the Dragon spacecraft Saturday. The crew will test the air inside the ship's pressurized compartment before beginning unloading more than 1,100 pounds of supplies packed inside the 12-foot-diameter, gumdrop-shaped capsule.
SpaceX's agreement with NASA did not require cargo delivery on this mission, but the agency manifested non-essential items - extra food, clothing, student experiments, and laptop computers - to fly to the station.
Dragon is the only cargo craft servicing the space station able to return equipment to the ground. Russian, European and Japanese vehicles dispose of trash when they burn up in the atmosphere, and Russia's Soyuz crew capsule can return only very limited cargo.
Future Dragon flights will haul up to 7,300 pounds of pressurized and external cargo to the space station. Dragon can return up to 5,500 pounds of internal equipment to Earth.
SpaceX has a $1.6 billion contract with NASA for at least 12 cargo missions through 2015.
NASA inked a $1.9 billion contract with Orbital Sciences Corp., which is also in public-private partnership with NASA for cargo transportation development, for at least eight resupply flights.
Suffredini said Orbital's first demonstration flight of its Cygnus freighter could reach the space station as soon as October. Orbital's cargo system ran into delays during construction of the launch pad for the Antares rocket at Wallops Island, Va.
Dragon still must return to Earth before NASA approves the Dragon's first operational cargo resupply mission, which is currently scheduled to blast off in September.
"After the launch, I said there were 1,000 things that had to go right," said Alan Lindenmoyer, NASA's commercial crew and cargo program manager. "Well, there are still several hundred, but I am very confident we will get through it."
Departure from the space station is scheduled for May 31, followed a few hours later by re-entry and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean west of California. Ships will be stationed near the landing zone to recover the spacecraft.
Musk said he was confident in the success of the rest of the mission. A simplified version of the Dragon spacecraft successfully parachuted back to Earth from space in 2010, becoming the first commercial craft to return from orbit.
"The most important part of the mission has been successfully achieved, so we're incredibly excited, and I think it is fair at this point to celebrate a significant victory," Musk said.
Private Dragon Capsule Arrives at Space Station in Historic First
Clara Moskowitz - Space.com
Two spacecraft, one public and one private, linked in orbit Friday when SpaceX's Dragon was attached to the International Space Station.
The historic moment represented the first time a commercial spacecraft has ever docked at the weightless laboratory.
NASA astronaut Don Pettit, controlling the space station's 58-foot (18-meter) robotic Canadarm2, berthed the unmanned Dragon capsule, built by commercial company SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corp.), to the space station's Harmony node at 12:02 p.m. EDT (1602 GMT).
The docking came about two hours hours after Pettit reached out to grab the free-floating Dragon with the arm at 9:56 a.m. EDT (1356 GMT).
"Houston, Station, it looks like we've got us a dragon by the tail," Pettit said at the time, while applause rang out in Mission Control back in Houston.
The link-up marks the end of the workday for Pettit and the other spaceflyers helping to welcome Dragon, NASA astronaut Joe Acaba and European Space Agency astronaut Andrei Kuipers. Tomorrow (May 26) around, the crew will open the hatches between the station and the capsule and float inside to begin unpacking the new arrival.
Delivery services
SpaceX was founded in 2002 by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, who also co-founded internet payment service PayPal. This mission is the second-ever flight of Dragon, which first launched to orbit in December 2010.
The current mission is a test flight under NASA's COTS program (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services), which helps private companies develop unmanned space freighters to haul supplies as a replacement for the retired space shuttles.
SpaceX, based in Hawthorne, Calif., has a $1.6 billion contract with the space agency to fly 12 cargo-delivery missions to the space station after this test flight is complete. If the rest of the mission goes smoothly, the first of these could launch as early as this autumn.
Laser troubles
Dragon's arrival at the space station this morning was somewhat delayed by unexpected readings from one of Dragon's navigation systems.
Dragon has been using a laser-based LIDAR system to send laser pulses toward the space station and measure its distance by calculating how long the pulses take to reflect back. Mission controllers realized the LIDAR was picking up stray light reflections from the station's large and shiny Japanese Kibo laboratory that were confusing the sensors.
Engineers quickly came up with a solution.
"The SpaceX team believes they have found a way to fix the problem with their LIDAR sensors on Dragon," NASA commentator Josh Byerly said. "SpaceX was able to basically adapt their LIDAR sensors onboard Dragon to sort of, for lack of a better word, close its eyes a little bit and have a more narrow field of view."
That seemed to correct the readings, and Dragon got back on track to pursue a meeting with the station.
However, this and other minor delays pushed back the time for this "grappling" from 7:59 a.m. EDT (1159 GMT). The timing was also dependent on lighting conditions.
"They have to do this in daylight because obviously they don’t want the crew trying to capture a brand-new vehicle in the dark," Byerly said.
Test flight
NASA and SpaceX officials stressed that anomalies and delays are normal in such a novel situation.
"That is to be expected," Byerly said. "As we keep reminding everyone, this is a test flight."
The 14.4 foot tall (4.4 meter) and 12 foot wide (3.7 m) gumdrop-shaped Dragon is carrying food, supplies and student-designed science experiments for the space station.
It was launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Tuesday (May 22). The vehicle is due to spend just under a week docked at the space station being unpacked.
Next Thursday (May 31), Dragon will be packed with its return cargo — completed science experiments and equipment no longer needed on the station — and sent back to Earth. The spacecraft is equipped with a heat shield to survive the temperatures of re-entry, and the capsule is intended to be recovered by ship crews after it splashes down in the Pacific Ocean.
Astronauts to Spend Memorial Day Unpacking Private Space Capsule
Mike Wall - Space.com
Rather than kick their feet up this Memorial Day weekend, the astronauts aboard the International Space Station will be unloading cargo from the first private spacecraft ever to visit the orbiting lab.
SpaceX's unmanned Dragon capsule docked with the station Friday (May 25), making spaceflight history in the process. Another milestone came Saturday at about 5:53 a.m. EDT (0953 GMT), when the hatches between Dragon and the $100 billion orbiting lab were opened.
The station's crew is now able to access the 1,014 pounds (460 kilograms) of cargo that Dragon brought up. But unpacking the capsule in earnest won't begin until Memorial Day (Monday, May 28), NASA officials said.
"Monday and Tuesday are very big cargo days on the space station with regard to Dragon," NASA flight director Holly Ridings said during a post-docking briefing Friday. "At least one of the crewmembers will be doing cargo operations almost all of their work days those days."
Six spaceflyers are currently living aboard the station: NASA astronauts Don Pettit and Joe Acaba, European astronaut Andre Kuipers, and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko, Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin.
Pettit, Acaba and Kuipers will handle most of the unloading operations, which should take a total of about 25 hours, Ridings said. Dragon's cargo consists primarily of food and clothing for the station astronauts, as well as 15 student science experiments.
SpaceX holds a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to make 12 supply runs to the space station. Dragon's current mission is a demonstration flight to see if the capsule and SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket are ready to start the bona fide cargo deliveries.
If all goes well, the first of the 12 contracted missions could launch in September, NASA officials said.
Dragon is slated to stay docked to the orbiting lab until Thursday (May 31), when it will detach and return to Earth with about 1,400 pounds (635 kg) of used gear from the station. The capsule is scheduled to depart and splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast, where SpaceX personnel plan to retrieve it with a recovery ship.
The six station astronauts have been busy for a while preparing for Dragon's arrival, but they'll get a chance to relax for at least part of the holiday weekend, Ridings said.
"We are going to give our crew some time off," Ridings said. "They've been working very hard over the last couple of days, so they'll have a little bit of time off over the weekend."
Final Frontier: Space Collisions and Liability
Joe Palazzolo - Wall Street Journal
Friday the world — or, more precisely, a clutch of nerds, we among them — watched as Space Exploration Technologies Corp. made history by attaching the first private spacecraft to the international space station.
Of course, every seminal event has legal implications, or at least the promise of them.
Timothy Nelson, a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, has considered a future in which private spacecraft and their jetsam clog Earth’s orbit, greatly increasing the chances of a collision.
Space vehicles, as a rule, are expensive. KIA hasn’t entered the game yet. So let’s say you’re a telecom company whose satellite crashes into a piece of space junk cast off by a SpaceX craft. It’s broke, and you want someone, be it SpaceX or the U.S. government, to pay.
“There’s a very undeveloped area of law concerning the liability of parties arising from space debris,” Mr. Nelson said.
The 1967 Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space — aka the Outer Space Treaty — and the 1972 Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects — aka the Space Liability Convention — were written with the assumption that claims would be resolved between states, he said.
If a busted U.S. satellite slams through the roof of the Kremlin, the U.S. pays for a new roof.
But when a private space vehicle crashes into another, “it’s not clear how you attribute liability,” said Mr. Nelson.
Maritime law could offer a guide, Mr. Nelson said. When a private vessel flying the Stars and Stripes clips another private vessel flying the Union Jack, neither government is liable. So should we assume the U.S. is liable for a privately controlled spacecraft?
Mr. Nelson noted that concerns about space junk were sharpening. ”There are some who maintain that we are very close to overload in space junk and that something needs to be done,” including ”deorbiting” certain space vehicles, he said.
But who would decide which to snatch out of orbit? Mr. Nelson said he didn’t know. “But it’d be a great contract.”
Space shuttle replica headed for Houston
Harvey Rice - Houston Chronicle
A 123-foot space shuttle is headed for Houston on Thursday from a dock at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a journey expected to take eight days.
The detailed replica, known as the Explorer, is expected to arrive in Galveston Bay on June 1, said Jeff Carr, a spokesman for Griffin Communications Group, which is organizing events surrounding the arrival of the replica for the Space Center Houston.
The Seabrook-Kemah Bridge will be closed for about 30 minutes beginning about noon until the barge and the 54-foot high replica pass into the Clear Lake Channel, Carr said.
The barge will slowly make its way to the Space Center barge dock near the intersection of NASA Parkway and Space Center Boulevard, he said. "The barge dock was used in the 60s and 70s to move big pieces of spacecraft and hardware used in the training and development of the Gemini and Apollo programs," Carr said.
The last time the dock was used was to move the Saturn V rocket now on display at the Space Center, he said. The 36-story rocket put Apollo 8 astronauts in orbit around the moon in 1968.
Carr said it would to take a full day to lift the replica off the barge with special equipment and weld it on to a transporter. The transporter will take about three hours to move about a mile to the Space Center on Sunday.
The Explorer was on display at the National Space and Aeronautic Administration's spaceport in Florida for 18 years. The replica was built using schematics, blueprints and archived documents lent by NASA and shuttle contractors.
Space shuttle replica sails out of Port Canaveral for Houston
Greg Pallone - Central Florida News 13
Another space shuttle has left Central Florida forever.
Space shuttle Explorer, the replica that used to be displayed in front of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, was loaded onto a barge Thursday.
Explorer is on its way to the Space Center Houston tourism facility, at Johnson Space Center, where it will remain on permanent display.
People gathered along the shoreline as the shuttle passed through the Canaveral Lock and then through Port Canaveral and past docked cruise ships, before heading for the open sea.
Beyel Brothers of Brevard County is handling the move.
They are the same company that installed the replica shuttle, solid rocket boosters and external tank at the Visitor Complex nearly 20 years ago.
"It's come full circle. Removing it, taking it around to Houston and the Johnson Space Center," said Steve Beyel.
The trip will take about six days depending on weather conditions.
A big celebration is planned at Johnson Space Center when the shuttle arrives.
Shuttle Explorer was an icon on the Space Coast since its installation at the KSC Visitor Complex in 1993. It was built in Apopka using the same blueprints that were used to build the actual orbiters.
Explorer was removed from the KSC Visitor Complex in December 2011, months after the final shuttle flight in July.
Two space shuttles remain in Florida. Endeavour will head to the California Science Center, in Los Angeles, in the fall.
Atlantis is staying in Brevard County, where it will go on permanent display at the KSC Visitor Complex.
Shuttle Discovery left the Space Coast in April, and is now at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington. There it replaced the test shuttle Enterprise, which was moved to New York City.
SpaceX leads new space race
John Kelly - Florida Today (Commentary)
The old way of developing space vehicles is dead.
With fewer people, less time and a fraction of the money that the government would have spent, Elon Musk and his company, Space Exploration Technologies, designed and built a new spaceship, launched it on the company’s own Falcon 9 rocket and flew the craft to the International Space Station. Dragon’s arrival at the orbiting lab on Friday was not only historic, but also game-changing.
With this flight, the sour grapes murmuring from some in the old-school aerospace business — many with a lot to lose if the SpaceX model is embraced and copied — should stop. For years now, people have grumbled “all talk, no action” or “put up, or shut up” as SpaceX garnered headlines for its promises of revolutionizing spaceflight.
Some in the industry went as far as to run advertisements in Washington political publications, poking fun at Musk’s showmanship in talking about grand goals. The ad showed a microphone and a rocket side by side, making the case that some companies make noise with rocket engines and some only talk about it. That’s over.
SpaceX is now the only American company with a flight-proven spacecraft that can travel to and from the space station. All of the rest, including some of the biggest companies in aerospace, are behind in the commercial space race. And they’re not just behind in a small-potatoes race for a few cargo flights to the space station or even in the quest to add astronauts to the ISS cargo manifest.
No, this is bigger. Dragon’s success will change the way NASA develops space systems from here forward. In political circles, the SpaceX flight will be seen as proof that a new, innovative private investment-driven model for developing space exploration projects can work. That will prompt more — and increasingly harder to answer — questions about the ways the old development model fails.
For a few hundred million dollars invested by taxpayers, the government got a new cargo ship for its space station. The old way of procuring this kind of spacecraft has consistently cost taxpayers more money than predicted, resulted in lengthy delays and often has ended up without any finished product being delivered at all.
Now is the time to use a similar development model for NASA’s next human spacecraft, Orion, and the super rocket needed to launch it. If an incentive-based, competitive model can work in the development of this new cargo-hauling system, why not? The only people saying “can’t be done” are probably the same naysayers who’ve been sitting in the peanut gallery making fun these last few years while the SpaceX team went to work and got it done.
Obama's tough decisions will lead nation forward in space
Mark Kelly - Orlando Sentinel (Opinion)
(Kelly is a former astronaut who flew on four Space Shuttle missions. He retired from the Navy and NASA in October 2011. He is married to former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona)
The men and women who make our nation's space program great — like those who built our nation — are driven by the question, "What's next?" Americans are built to explore, discover and innovate.
But a little more than a year ago, as I boarded space shuttle Endeavour on its final voyage into space, my fellow astronauts and I were left to ask, "What's next?" in a much different tone.
President Obama has made some tough decisions to answer that question. He has a forward-looking plan for sustainable space exploration and innovation that extends the life of the International Space Station.
He supports the growing commercial space-transportation industry, which could create thousands of jobs over the next few years. And partnering with the private sector to invest in critical, next-generation research and development, he is keeping our space program moving forward toward the next scientific challenges.
Last week's historic launch of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, lifted by the Falcon 9 rocket, was an important step in that direction. It marked the first launch of a commercial spacecraft that would dock with the International Space Station.
In carrying cargo into space — one day it will carry crew, too — private industry is freeing up NASA to focus on the most challenging human spaceflight pursuits, like how to take American astronauts where we have never been before — deep into space, onto asteroids and to Mars.
The decision to commercialize certain parts of our space program was not easy. I was not a fan at first of canceling the Constellation rocket program. I worried about what it would mean for NASA's overall mission, and what it would do to the brilliant and patriotic men and women who work there.
But I'm impressed by how far SpaceX has come in the past 17 months. And it's a bargain: The dramatic cost savings of commercial spaceflight — savings we need to reduce the deficit and grow our economy — let us expand the frontiers of space and stay at the forefront of technological innovation. The president made a tough, bold decision — and I now believe he was right.
It's part of a series of tough decisions he has made to stand by NASA and especially Florida's Space Coast. The president is investing in work-force training to connect Space Coast workers with emerging clean-energy businesses.
He's investing to upgrade the Kennedy Space Center and get it ready to launch NASA's new rockets and capsules, and setting the stage for new public and private space activity to help fill the spaceflight gap.
We've already seen these investments make a difference. In October, a partnership between Kennedy Space Center and Boeing announced that 550 jobs over the next three years may be created in Florida to build the CST-100 spacecraft.
Investing in aerospace and transformative technology means NASA will advance the new systems and cutting-edge capabilities for its future missions and lower the cost of commercial space activities. President Obama knows investments in space travel will create jobs for Floridians and that the Space Coast should be at the center of America's commercial space industry as NASA continues its mission of research and exploration.
That's our way forward. Our space program has fueled jobs and entire industries in the Space Coast and beyond. It has improved our lives, strengthened our economy and inspired generations of Americans.
And if we are to out-innovate the rest of the world and create the jobs of the future, we need NASA and the world-class aerospace supply chain up and down the Space Coast to get us there.
Two years ago, President Obama said at Cape Canaveral, "Step by step, we will push the boundaries not only of where we can go, but what we can do." That's a farsighted vision for the future that answers the tough question of "What's next?" for our space program and our country.
Is Texas starting to get serious about the SpaceX opportunity?
Eric Berger - Houston Chronicle's SciGuy
Last month Elon Musk told me Texas hasn’t been doing much to entice his company to build a spaceport near Brownsville.
“There’s been a lot of good action by the authorities in the Brownsville area; there’s not been that much at the state level, and we’d certainly appreciate more from the state level,” Musk said at the time.
I reported it, and afterward I was told that state officials were miffed because they have been working with SpaceX to get a deal done.
Now we’re starting to hear more detail about the negotiations, in which the state is close to finalizing a multi-million dollar package to bring SpaceX to Texas.
SpaceX is in a position of strength after a string of successes the company has had during the last week, from launching the first commercial spacecraft toward the International Space Station to berthing it on Friday. They also don’t have plans on paper, and they have a viable product to fly into space.
The company is clearly going to be a major player in the future of spaceflight and probably human spaceflight after a series of darn good test flights.
As I’ve said before, the state needs to be doing everything it can to ensure that SpaceX has a significant presence here.
END
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