Crew Dragon spacecraft crucial test flight unmanned
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket ready to launch this weekend
CAPE CANAVERAL: SpaceX closes in on human spaceflight with this weekend’s debut of a new capsule designed for astronauts.
The sixday test flight will be real in every regard, beginning with a Florida liftoff tomorrow and a docking on Sunday with the International Space Station. But the Dragon capsule won’t carry humans, rather a test dummy a named Ripley after the tough heroine in the Alien films, in the same white SpaceX spacesuit that astro nauts will wear.
Nasa does not expect this crucial shakedown cruise to go perfectly. Lessons learned should improve safety when two Nasa astronauts strap into a Dragon as early as July.
‘‘Giant leaps are made by a series of consistent smaller steps. This one will be a big step!’’ retired astronaut Scott Kelly, Nasa’s former oneyear space station resident, tweeted yesterday.
Boeing is also in the race to end Nasa’s eightyear drought of launching US astronauts on US rockets from US soil. The space agency is turning to private taxi rides to reduce its pricey reliance on Russian rockets to get astronauts to and from the space station. Nasa is providing $US8 billion ($NZ11.7 billion) for SpaceX and Boeing to build and operate the new systems.
SpaceX has made 16 space station deliveries over the past seven years. The private company overhauled the cargo Dragon capsule to make it safe and comfortable for passengers. It is slightly bigger, 8m tall and also launches atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. But now there are four seats, three windows, computer touchscreens and lifesupport systems. Instead of solar wings, solar cells are on the spacecraft itself. And eight engines are built into the capsule walls for use in an emergency; these abort engines could shoot the capsule off a malfunctioning rocket at any time during the launch. — AP