SpaceX’s oldest Crew Dragon spacecraft launched Sunday night time on its fifth mission to the Worldwide House Station, and engineers are crunching knowledge to see if the fleet of Dragons can safely fly as many as 15 occasions.
It has been 5 years since SpaceX launched the primary Crew Dragon spacecraft on an unpiloted check flight to the area station, and almost 4 years since SpaceX’s first astronaut mission took off in Could 2020. Since then, SpaceX has put its clan of Dragons to make use of ferrying astronauts and cargo to and from low-Earth orbit.
Now, it is already time to speak about extending the lifetime of the Dragon spaceships. SpaceX and NASA, which shared the price of creating the Crew Dragon, initially licensed every capsule for 5 flights. Crew Dragon Endeavour, the primary within the Dragon fleet to hold astronauts, is now flying for the fifth time.
This ship has spent 466 days in orbit, longer than any spacecraft designed to move folks to and from Earth. It can add roughly 180 days to its flight log with this mission.
Crew Dragon Endeavour lifted off from Florida aboard a Falcon 9 rocket at 10:53 pm EST Sunday (03:53 UTC Monday), following a three-day delay as a result of poor climate situations throughout the Atlantic Ocean, the place the capsule would ditch into the ocean within the occasion of a rocket failure throughout the climb into orbit.
Commander Matthew Dominick, pilot Michael Barratt, mission specialist Jeanette Epps, and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin placed on their SpaceX stress fits and strapped into their seats inside Crew Dragon Endeavour Sunday night at NASA’s Kennedy House Heart. SpaceX loaded liquid propellants into the rocket, whereas floor groups spent the ultimate hour of the countdown evaluating a small crack found on Dragon’s facet hatch seal. Managers in the end cleared the spacecraft for launch after contemplating whether or not the crack may pose a security menace throughout reentry on the finish of the mission.
“We’re assured that we perceive the problem and might nonetheless fly the entire mission safely,” a member of SpaceX’s mission management group informed the crew inside Dragon.
This mission, often called Crew-8, launched on a model new Falcon 9 booster, which returned to touchdown a couple of minutes after liftoff at Cape Canaveral House Power Station. The Falcon 9’s higher stage launched the Dragon spacecraft into orbit about 12 minutes after liftoff. The four-person crew will dock on the area station round 3 am EST (0800 UTC) Tuesday.
Crew-8 will change the four-person Crew-7 group that has been on the area station since final August. Crew-7 will return to Earth in about one week on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endurance spacecraft, which is flying in area for the third time.
The Crew-8 mission come house for a reentry and splashdown off the coast of Florida in late August of this yr, wrapping up Crew Dragon Endeavour’s fifth journey to area. That is the present life restrict for a Crew Dragon spacecraft, however do not depend out Endeavour simply but.
Fleet administration
“Proper now, we’re licensed for 5 flights on Dragon, and we’re taking a look at extending that life out,” stated Steve Stich, NASA’s business crew program supervisor. “I feel the purpose could be for SpaceX to say 15 flights of Dragon. We might not get there in each single system.”
One after the other, engineers at SpaceX and NASA are taking a look at Dragon’s structural skeleton, composite shells, rocket engines, valves, and different parts to see how a lot life is left in them. Some elements of the spacecraft slowly fatigue from the stresses of every launch, reentry and splashdown, together with the intense temperature swings the capsule sees 1000’s of occasions in orbit. Every Draco thruster on the spacecraft is licensed for a sure variety of firings.
Some parts are already authorised for 15 flights, Stich stated in a latest press convention. “Some, we’re nonetheless in the midst of engaged on,” he stated. “A few of these parts should undergo some re-qualification to make it possible for they’ll make it out to fifteen flights.”
Re-qualifying a element on a spacecraft sometimes includes placing {hardware} by in depth testing on the bottom. As a result of SpaceX reuses {hardware}, engineers can take away an element from a flown Dragon spacecraft and put it by qualification testing. NASA will get the ultimate say in certifying the Dragon spacecraft for added flights as a result of the company is SpaceX’s main buyer for crew missions.
The Dragon fleet is flying extra typically than SpaceX or NASA initially anticipated. The primary purpose for that is that Boeing, NASA’s different business crew contractor, is working about 4 years behind SpaceX in attending to its first astronaut launch on the Starliner spacecraft.
When NASA chosen SpaceX and Boeing for multibillion-dollar business crew contracts in 2014, the company envisioned alternating between Crew Dragon and Starliner flights each six months to rotate four-person crews on the Worldwide House Station. With Boeing’s delays, SpaceX has picked up the slack.
The Boeing delays have been good for SpaceX within the sense that NASA has awarded contract extensions to hold the Crew Dragon program by the top of the 2020s. NASA has bought 14 operational Crew Dragon flights from SpaceX, in comparison with six Starliner flights from Boeing. On Sunday night time, SpaceX launched the eighth operational Crew Dragon flight for NASA, and the thirteenth crew flight on Dragon general.
Whereas SpaceX is flying astronauts for NASA, the corporate can be launching all-private crews to orbit by offers with the Houston-based firm Axiom House and billionaire Jared Isaacman, who plans to carry out the first business spacewalk later this yr.
Enterprise is booming, however SpaceX is reaching certification limits on the Dragon spacecraft sooner than anticipated.
SpaceX has 4 human-rated Dragon spaceships, plus three Dragons designed for cargo missions. A fifth Crew Dragon is on observe for completion later this yr, and can most likely make its first flight in early 2025, based on Stich. SpaceX officers have stated this would be the last Crew Dragon spacecraft the corporate will construct, and the fleet of 5 capsules shall be sufficient to fulfill demand for Dragon missions till the next-generation Starship automobile is able to take over.
Will probably be at the very least a number of years, and presumably longer, till Starship is licensed for human launches and landings. Till then, Dragons will proceed launching on Falcon 9 rockets, even when some satellite tv for pc missions shift to Starship.
SpaceX has flown a few of its reusable Falcon 9 boosters as many as 19 occasions, almost double the rocket’s unique life expectancy, and is taking a look at certifying Falcon 9s for as many as 40 launches and landings.
Stich stated NASA and SpaceX may decide on an intermediate variety of flights, someplace between 5 and 15, once they re-certify the Dragon spaceships. A later spherical of testing and evaluations may ultimately get to SpaceX’s 15-flight purpose. “I want to get out to seven to 10 flights for Dragon, however we’ll see the place we get,” he stated.
There are some elements, like warmth protect materials and parachutes, that SpaceX nonetheless wants to interchange after every flight.
It is at all times the valves
Throughout preparations for the Crew-8 mission, SpaceX technicians swapped out valves contained in the spacecraft’s propulsion system that appeared to point out indicators of corrosion. The valves management the move of propellant to the Draco thrusters wanted to maneuver the spacecraft in orbit, and to the extra highly effective SuperDraco engines that may solely fireplace within the occasion of a launch abort.
“We have had some valve corrosion within the oxidizer valves, each on the low stress facet which is used on orbit, after which the facet for aborts,” Stich stated.
The Draco and SuperDraco thrusters devour a hypergolic combination of propellants. Hydrazine is the gas and nitrogen tetroxide is the oxidizer, and the propellants ignite once they are available contact with each other. Stich stated technicians changed a number of kinds of valves within the oxidizer facet of the propulsion system, together with tank isolation valves, Draco manifold valves, and throttle valves for the SuperDraco abort engines.
“All these have been associated to corrosion,” Stich stated. “I’d say all of them have been finished out of an abundance of warning.”
Engineers monitor how the valves cycle throughout checkouts between flights. “If the timing begins to look a bit of uncommon, we’ll go in and change these valves,” Stich stated.
SpaceX
Invoice Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice chairman of construct and flight reliability, stated the valve points may have one thing to do with put on and tear over the course of Crew Dragon Endeavour’s 4 earlier area missions. But it surely most likely has extra to do with environmental components, he stated.
“I feel it’s extra how can we preserve the setting pristine across the valve and forestall that (corrosion),” Gerstenmaier stated. “We might make some design modifications on the valves sooner or later to work on that space.”
Valve issues are nothing new for SpaceX or just about another area firm.
Boeing had hassle with corroded valves within the Starliner spacecraft. Investigators traced the reason for that drawback to the response of nitric acid with moisture that seeped into the propulsion system. SpaceX apparently detected proof of valve corrosion early, earlier than it manifested right into a extra significant issue like that which grounded a Starliner check flight for almost a yr. Gerstenmaier stated SpaceX added purges to the propulsion system to forestall contamination from increase on the valves.
Epps lastly in orbit
Jeanette Epps, a mission specialist on the Crew-8 mission, waited almost 15 years to fly in area after NASA chosen her as an astronaut in 2009.
She was set to change into the primary Black astronaut to fly a long-duration stint on the area station in 2018, when she was coaching for launch on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. However NASA changed her with a backup crew member, and the company by no means publicly said a purpose for the crew change.
It is uncommon however not unprecedented for NASA to take away an astronaut from a crew quickly earlier than launch, but it surely’s normally for medical causes, like an sickness an harm. In these circumstances, NASA sometimes withholds particulars from the general public as a result of privateness considerations, however the company has recognized a medical situation as the explanation for changing a crew member.
That was not the case for Epps. Some folks exterior the company theorized Epps may need been faraway from her flight for political or racial causes, however Ars has reported that didn’t look like the case.
Epps, a former CIA expertise intelligence officer, returned from Russia to NASA’s astronaut coaching base in Houston to await one other task. In her public remarks after NASA eliminated her from the Soyuz crew, She was clearly dissatisfied. “It’s one thing that I reside with day by day,” Epps stated in 2018.
However she declined to “speculate” publicly on the explanation for NASA’s choice. She stated she handed all of her NASA and Russian coaching for the mission. “I did not have any medical situations or something like that,” Epps stated in 2018. “And I did not have any household points in any respect, both.”
NASA did make Epps eligible for future flight assignments pretty quickly after she misplaced her Soyuz seat. In 2020, NASA added Epps to the crew slated to fly Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule on its first operational mission to the area station, however NASA later reassigned her to coach for a SpaceX launch after continued delays on Boeing’s Starliner program.
She would seemingly have flown on SpaceX’s Crew-5 mission in 2022. However NASA and Russia’s area company signed a long-planned barter settlement to permit SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft to start ferrying Russian cosmonauts to and from the area station and provides US astronauts seats on Russian Soyuz flights. That meant a Russian cosmonaut took the open seat on the Crew-5 mission.
Epps was final member of NASA’s 2009 astronaut class to fly in area. Some astronauts within the 2009 class have already flown twice. In January, she informed reporters she saved her spirits up by persevering with to coach. Regardless of the lengthy wait to get into area, Epps is among the many few astronauts who’ve skilled to fly on Soyuz, Starliner, and Dragon.
“I’ve been fairly busy over the previous couple of years nonetheless coaching, nonetheless working towards the purpose of going to the area station,” Epps stated.
Matthew Dominick, the Crew-8 commander, can be a first-time area flier. He was a US Navy check pilot who flew F/A-18 fighter planes earlier than NASA chosen him for the astronaut corps in 2017. Michael Barratt, the Crew-8 pilot and a flight surgeon, is a veteran of two earlier flights to the area station, one on a Soyuz and one other on an area shuttle.
Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, one other spaceflight rookie, rounds out the crew. He was a radio communications engineer and served within the Russian navy earlier than becoming a member of Russia’s cosmonaut corps.
March 3, 2024: This story was up to date after the launch of SpaceX’s Crew-8 mission.
