SpaceX launch comes 4 years to the day since 1st Crew Dragon mission
SpaceX Crew Dragon celebrated its fourth birthday by launching another four humans to space.
The Crew-6 mission that sent two NASA astronauts, one United Arab Emirates astronaut and one Roscosmos cosmonaut to space from Kennedy Space Center early Thursday marked four years to the day, in fact within two hours and 15 minutes of the first launch of a Crew Dragon capsule.
That uncrewed flight in 2019 called Demo-1 lifted off March 2 at 2:49 a.m. the first step in SpaceX’s string of nine successful crewed flights that have since sent 34 humans to space. With Crew-6, which blasted off from Kennedy Space Center at 12:34 a.m. Thursday, SpaceX is on the last mission of the original contract from NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP), although it has since been awarded an additional eight missions to the International Space Station, three of which are already in preparation mode.
“When you ask if this is routine now, I think we’re in a rhythm of getting into these flights,” said NASA CCP manager Steve Stich in a post-flight news conference. “Some parts of it are much more predictable as we get into the flight readiness process ... but every single flight that we get into the countdown of, there’s a little bit of a difference . ... So it never is easy and it’s never really routine. They’re each different. They each have their challenges.”
The flight came under clear conditions with the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter treating viewers in the western horizon before launch. In the press conference, Benji Reed, SpaceX’s senior director for its human spaceflight program thought it poetic to look up at the stars while sending humans up into space.
Docking occurred at 1:40 a.m. Friday with hatch opening at 3:18 a.m. as the crew joined the seven already on board the ISS as part of Expedition 68. The four members of Crew-5 that were waiting for their replacements will now undock a few days after arrival for a return trip to Earth in their own Crew Dragon with a splashdown off the coast of Florida. NASA officials said they were looking at departing the ISS on Wednesday or Thursday.
“It’s also a critical activity and a critical operation that we’re paying close attention to as we get ready to bring those guys home after all of their hard work on station back to their families,” Reed said.
NASA will offer coverage of the docking and ceremony at NASA. gov/nasalive beginning at 11:30 p.m. Thursday.
SpaceX has surged ahead of Boeing, which was also awarded a commercial crew contract for its CST-100 Starliner. That spacecraft, though, which also had its first uncrewed launch in 2019, endured a series of setbacks starting with that initial flight’s failure to rendezvous with the ISS.
But after finally completing a successful uncrewed test flight during a redo mission nearly 18 months later in 2022, Boeing is set to knock out its first crewed test flight with two NASA astronauts that will join Crew-6 and dock with the space station on a mission planned for mid- to lateApril.
It will be the first time the station has two crewed spacecraft from two different commercial partners docked at the same time.
“Relative to Boeing, we’re working really hard to get to the crewed flight test very soon,” Stich said. “And we already have six flights for Boeing on contract and we’ll look out there as we get toward the end of the space station program in that 2030 timeframe and see if we need to add more flights at a later time.” Originally SpaceX and Boeing were to provide one flight each to the station per year, but SpaceX had to take on double duty as Starliner continued working through its problems.
“When you look back at the opportunity that we’ve had, to be able to provide these six-month rotational missions was great,” Reed said. “It wasn’t what we originally planned to do, necessarily, but we’re happy to do it.”
SpaceX’s path to success, though, wasn’t without issues. The original Crew Dragon capsule for Demo-1 actually exploded during post-launch testing at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station after its recovery.
That capsule’s destruction meant more than a year before the Demo-2 flight sent NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley on their record-setting mission to the ISS, marking the first time astronauts had launched from the U.S. since the end of the Space Shuttle Program in 2011. That flight in May 2020 was followed by Crew-1 in November, the first of a steady run of space station rotational missions about every six months.
The Crew-6 quartet are expected to stay on board the ISS until relieved by Crew-7 and return to Earth in Crew Dragon Endeavour likely in early September.
Endeavour is on its fourth mission having been the original ride for Demo-2, and having since flown on Crew-2 and the first private astronaut mission to the ISS for Axiom Space.
SpaceX has since built out and flown three more capsules with a fifth in the works expected to fly for the first time in late 2024. Each capsule is rated to fly five times, but their life expectancy could be expanded.
In addition to Demo-1 and the six flights for NASA, the Crew Dragon has made two flights for private companies - Axiom-1 and the Inspiration4 mission that took billionaire Jared Isaacman on a three-day orbital flight in 2019. Issacman is set to return on a new mission called Polaris Dawn launching from KSC this summer while Axiom Space is gearing up for its second mission to the ISS as early as May.
By the end of the year, SpaceX looks to have completed 12 crewed flights of Dragon carrying 46 humans to space. Its 50th passenger is likely to come in just over a year.
“It’s a sacred honor. I’ve sat in this seat before and we’ve said those words and every single time. That’s the truth, right? This is a sacred honor that we all share in carrying these people’s lives to space and bring them back home to their families,” Reed said.