SpaceX to fly 1st cargo capsule on last mission
A decade ago, Elon Musk watched his Falcon 9 rocket lift off on its first test flight into partly cloudy skies over Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on what he then called “one of the best days of my life.”
Musk could see a path forward on that June day in 2010: If Falcon 9 could next perform a successful demonstration mission with a Dragon cargo capsule onboard, too, and get certified for flight, the company would be on its way to be the first commercial enterprise to dock at the International Space Station.
That first crucial demo mission with Dragon would come in late 2010, setting up SpaceX to do what only a few governments had done before. The Falcon 9 and Dragon went up, the capsule went into orbit and then came back down to Earth, splashing into the Pacific Ocean and taking SpaceX from the, “Is it possible” stage to, “It is possible,” president Gwynne Shotwell said at the time.
Then in October 2012, the space station’s 58-foot robotic arm reached out and pulled Dragon in, signaling the beginning of a series of 20 operational missions for the version of Dragon that heralded the start of expanded commercial partnerships in space. SpaceX got $1.6 billion for the first 12 missions, and then received an extension for another eight missions, putting the value of the contract over $3 billion.
The last of those missions takes off Friday from the same pad Elon Musk gazed at years ago, and Dragon 1, as it’s called. It will be put to bed to make way for the next version the capsule, and the continuation of NASA’s contract with the company that has become one of its lead commercial partners in the past 10 years.
The 20th SpaceX resupply mission is set for 11:50 p.m. from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s launch complex 40, carrying more than 5,600 pounds of cargo that will support dozens of science experiments in the orbiting laboratory. Concerns over liftoff winds put the weather at 60% favorable for launch Friday, according to the Air Force’s 45th Weather Squadron. Conditions improve to 90% “go” for launch on Saturday as the winds die down.
The vehicle set to fly on Friday has operated two other cargo resupply missions before. Reusability, a long-term mission for SpaceX, is getting close to routine. Nine of SpaceX’s 20 ISS missions — assuming Friday’s mission is successful — used a reflown capsule and three of them used a capsule that flew three times.
Booster landings are also becoming a regular occurrence. On Friday, SpaceX will attempt its 50th landing of a Falcon 9 rocket, this one at Cape Canaveral’s Landing Zone 1, as it continues to recycle more parts of its launch vehicles.
Like in 2010, SpaceX is again on the cusp of history. The company is likely to soon get approval for a new class of Dragon vehicle — this one equipped to carry crew — to fly to the station. Crew Dragon has already performed its successful demonstration mission. Now it’s just waiting for the green light to fly with astronauts on board.
Meanwhile, the cargo version of Crew Dragon, an updated spacecraft known as Dragon 2, prepares to begin its contract with NASA to regularly deliver cargo to the space station. SpaceX, Orbital ATK — now Northrop Grumman — and the Sierra Nevada Corporation were awarded the second resupply contract in 2016 to service the space station from 2019 through 2024. The second contract is about $400 million more expensive, a 2018 NASA audit found, due to the choice of three contractors instead of two, higher integration costs and higher pricing for SpaceX, which increased its cost per kilogram by 50%.
Dragon 2, which is set to start flying in the fall, features a different shape, more overall cargo space and the ability to dock autonomously with the space station, instead of needing to attach to a robotic arm to berth. It’s built to be reused five times, instead of a maximum of three.