The Crew Dragon spacecraft launched by SpaceX yesterday efficiently docked with the Worldwide House Station as its crew of 4 astronauts started their six-month mission.
The docking came about about 9:16 EST whereas the 2 spacecrafts had been orbiting above Australia, SpaceX officers mentioned in a streamed broadcast.
Known as Crew-7, this journey marks SpaceX’s seventh operational human spaceflight mission to the house station beneath NASA’s Industrial Crew Program. It is also the eleventh time SpaceX has launched people into orbit.
It comes as Boeing Co. — NASA’s different Industrial Crew supplier — works to get its long-delayed Starliner spacecraft able to fly subsequent yr. Delays have raised considerations about NASA’s aim of getting a number of lifelines to the ISS.
Led by NASA astronaut and commander Jasmin Moghbeli, Saturday’s crew consists of Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen of the European House Company, Satoshi Furukawa from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Company and Russian cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov. The crew are slated to remain on board earlier than returning in early 2024.
The 4 astronauts of SpaceX’s Crew-6 mission, who’ve been residing on the ISS since March, will spend the following week welcoming the Crew-7 astronauts earlier than returning to Earth in their very own Crew Dragon capsule, tentatively scheduled for Sept. 1.
NASA and SpaceX had initially hoped to launch Friday, however selected to name off liftoff hours prior with the intention to take extra time to research the Dragon’s life-support system.
The launch of Crew-7 comes after SpaceX disclosed points with sticky valves on a earlier Dragon flight — a problem that would have been an issue for Saturday’s flight. Throughout a cargo resupply mission to the house station in June, SpaceX seen {that a} specific valve within the Dragon cargo capsule had been caught open all through the flight. The valve is supposed to stay open and solely wants to shut if there’s a propellant leak, so it did not pose a lot of an issue. But when there had been a leak, SpaceX would have had a a lot larger problem.
After that mission ended and the Dragon capsule returned to Earth, SpaceX took a have a look at the problematic valve and located proof of corrosion after sending elements of it for testing. That triggered the corporate to take a look at valves all through the Dragon fleet.
“We needed to grasp it very totally, so we spent the final month or so taking a look at information, and SpaceX did testing of various valves all throughout the nation,” Steve Stich, the supervisor of the Industrial Crew Program at NASA, mentioned throughout a press convention forward of flight.
Finally, the corporate pinpointed the supply of the issue. A few of the propellant the Dragon spacecraft makes use of can combine with an excessive amount of moisture within the air, creating acid that corrodes the valve.
SpaceX mentioned that additional testing revealed a repair for the sticky valves. “We figured on the market’s a manner that if we really energy the valve a bit bit longer, we will really drive by this corrosion and get again performance to the valve,” Invoice Gerstenmaier, vp of construct and flight reliability at SpaceX, mentioned through the press convention. The corporate can also be incorporating dry nitrogen air to purge extra moisture from the system, an answer that Boeing used for Starliner.
SpaceX additionally opted to interchange among the valves on a number of Dragon spacecraft together with among the valves on Crew-7’s Dragon.
SpaceX and NASA are nonetheless pondering of how to repair the corrosion within the long-term, although, because the aim is to fly the Crew Dragon automobiles to house at the very least 5 instances every.
