SpaceX capsule blasts off on risky test flight
‘Alien’-named dummy aboard; humans go in July?
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — America’s newest capsule for astronauts rocketed Saturday toward the International Space Station on a high-stakes test flight by SpaceX.
The only passenger was a life-size test dummy, named Ripley after the lead character in the “Alien” movies. SpaceX needs to nail the debut of its crew Dragon capsule before putting people on board later this year.
This latest, flashiest Dragon is on a fast track to reach the space station Sunday, 27 hours after liftoff.
It will spend five days docked to the orbiting outpost, before making a retrostyle splashdown in the Atlantic on Friday — all vital training for the next space demo, possibly this summer, when two astronauts strap in.
SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk said the launch was “super stressful” to watch, but he’s hopeful the capsule will be ready to carry people later this year.
“We have to dock to the station. We have to come back, but so far it’s worked; we’ve passed the riskiest items,” Musk said barely an hour after liftoff
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine called it “a big night for the United States of America.”
“We’re on the precipice of launching American astronauts on American rockets from American soil again for the first time since the retirement of the space shuttles in 2011,” said Bridenstine, who got a special tour of the launch pad on the eve of launch, by Musk.
An estimated 5,000 NASA and contractor employees, tourists and journalists gathered in the wee hours at Kennedy Space Center with the SpaceX launch team, as the Falcon 9 rocket blasted off before dawn from the same spot where Apollo moon rockets and space shuttles once soared. Across the country at SpaceX Mission Control in Hawthorne, Calif., company employees went wild, cheering every step of the way until the capsule successfully reached orbit.
Looking on from Kennedy’s Launch Control were the two NASA astronauts who will strap in as early as July for the second space demo, Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken. Shortly after liftoff, Musk asked them, “How do you feel about flying on it?”
It’s been eight years since Hurley and three other astronauts flew the last space shuttle mission, and human launches from Florida ceased.
NASA turned to private companies, SpaceX and Boeing, and has provided them $8 billion to build and operate crew capsules to ferry astronauts to and from the space station. Now Russian rockets are the only way to get astronauts to the 250-mile-high outpost. Soyuz tickets have skyrocketed over the years; NASA currently pays $82 million per seat.
Bridenstine said he’s confident that astronauts will soar on a Dragon or Starliner — or both — by year’s end. But he stressed there’s no rush.
“We are not in a space race,” he said. “That race is over. We went to the moon and we won. It’s done. Now we’re in a position where we can take our time and make sure we get it right.”
SpaceX already has made 16 trips to the space station using cargo Dragons. The white crew Dragon is slightly bigger — 27 feet tip to tip — and considerably fancier and safer. Musk said the redesigned capsule has “hardly a part in common” with its predecessor.
It features four seats, three windows, touchscreen computer displays and life-support equipment, as well as eight abort engines to pull the capsule to safety in the event of a launch emergency. Solar cells are mounted on the spacecraft for electrical power, as opposed to the protruding solar wings on cargo Dragons.
For the test, the Ripley dummy was strapped into the far left seat, wearing the company’s snappy white spacesuit. The other seats were empty, save for a small plush toy resembling Earth that was free to float upon reaching zero-gravity.
As many as seven astronauts could squeeze in, although four will be the norm once flights get going, allowing for a little cargo room. About 450 pounds of supplies are going up on this flight.
The capsule is designed to dock and undock auto- matically with the space station. Cargo Dragon must be maneuvered with the station’s robot arm.
Like Ripley, the capsule is rigged with sensors. Engineers will be carefully watching sound, vibration and other stresses on the spacecraft, while monitoring the life-support, communication and propulsion systems. Some of the equipment needs more work — possibly even redesign — before serving human passengers.
“We’re going to learn a ton from this mission,” said NASA’s commercial crew program manager, Kathy Lueders.