[SPESS] 2015-06-28 SpaceX Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) 7 Launch
drasnor
Starship OperatorHawthorne, CA Icrontian
2015-06-28 14:21 UTC (10:21 EDT), Cape Canaveral, FL: SpaceX will be launching a Falcon 9 medium-lift launch vehicle carrying a Dragon 1 spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under the Commercial Resupply Services program. This will be the 9th flight of the Dragon 1 spacecraft and the seventh mission under the CRS contract (designated CRS-7/SpX-7). CRS-7 is slated to arrive at ISS at 11:00 UTC (07:00 EDT) on June 30 following a two-day rendezvous phasing profile. The flagship payload for this mission is the International Docking Adapter 1 (IDA-1) which will be installed on the Pressurized Mating Adapter 2 (PMA-2) module to allow the next generation of United States manned spacecraft to dock with ISS. IDA adapts the older Androgynous Peripheral Attach System (APAS) docking collars on ISS last used by Shuttle to the new NASA Docking System (NDS) standard adopted by the Lockheed Martin Orion, Boeing CST-100, SpaceX Dragon 2, and Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser. IDA-1/PMA-2 are situated on the forward end of ISS to allow for V-bar approaches.
International Docking Adapter 1 ready for shipping. The peg-and-cross extension on the lower left is a combination visual, infrared, and laser retroreflector docking alignment target used to ensure the two spacecraft are correctly aligned.
Riding in the pressurized section are the usual complement of clothes and supplies as well as AggieSat 4 and Bevo 2 student satellites for Texas A&M University and University of Texas respectively. These satellites will be launched together from the Space Station Integrated Kinetic Launcher for Orbital Payload Systems (SSIKLOPS or "Cyclops") deployment system and demonstrate relative navigation and inter-satellite communication in addition to a host of other technical capabilities. Cyclops is used to deploy larger, more capable spacecraft up to 100 kg compared with the 1-3 kg nanosatellites handled by the NanoRacks dispensers. This will be the second time a spacecraft has been deployed from Cyclops following its delivery on the SpaceX CRS-4 mission.
SpinSat 1 primed for deployment from Cyclops in its first operational use.
The weather is forecast to be 90% favorable for the 6/28 launch attempt with mild winds and scattered clouds. The launch window is instantaneous due to the nature of the spacecraft orbital injection and as such any delay or hold will result in a 24-hour delay. In addition to the primary mission of delivering the Dragon spacecraft safely to its rendezvous with ISS, SpaceX will be making its fourth attempt to land the first stage of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle on its Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship (ASDS) Of Course I Still Love You shortly after launch. The previous attempt during the CRS-6 launch ended in a hard landing due to problems with throttle valve stiction on the landing engine. Earlier attempts also ended in near-successes including a perfect landing in high seas without a drone ship in place during the DSCOVR mission earlier this year and a crash landing on ASDS Just Read The Instructions due to early depletion of hydraulic fluid powering the first stage control effectors during the CRS-5 mission. This will be a morning launch providing good conditions for the launch and first stage recovery attempt. SpaceX will be providing live streaming coverage of the launch on their webcast at http://www.spacex.com/webcast/ and NASA will also be streaming the launch on their feed at http://www.ustream.tv/nasahdtv .
Falcon 9 executing a hard landing following a successful launch of the Dragon CRS-6/SpX-6 mission.
Have fun and fly safe!
Comments
Your job is so freakin' sweet.
Let this be a lesson to you, kids. Stay in school. Study hard. You too can become a rocket scientist and be a part of one of the most ambitious and influential space programs since the space shuttle.
Update: the newly-commissioned ASDS Of Course I Still Love You will be used for this weekend's Falcon 9 landing attempt.
SpaceX released a longer-cut sequence of the CRS-6 hard landing for your viewing pleasure.
Its so close!
Sorry to hear the news, Dras
I was so sad when I heard about this morning.
Sorry about CRS7, Drew.
Thank y'all, I could definitely use the hugs.
Sorry, Drasnor =(
Do you know what happened?
I thought maybe @drasnor could give us the layman version.
I'll try. Imagine you have an inflatable boat like a Zodiac.
The hull needs to be inflated to some pressure for the hull to be rigid. Too little pressure and you get a situation like this:
Too much pressure and you get a situation like this:
Somewhere in between is the happy medium that lets your Zodiac be a good boat.
I'm fascinated by how clean a break up it is. Usually when these sorts of things happen, there's fire everywhere. Yet even though I can see the booster burning up until the last second, once the smoke clears, there's hardly been any fire at all, and then it's just clean air with parts falling. Is that a failsafe? Or just a result of how it broke up?
I don't know that there's a lot of oxygen up there. Rocket propellant is self-oxidizing, so it will continue to burn regardless, but once the fuel gets exposed to the atmosphere, it's pretty much mostly by itself.
The preliminary report came out yesterday: http://www.spacex.com/news/2015/07/20/crs-7-investigation-update
So what are we looking at here? Mis-labeling, defective part, etc.?
Gotta read, bro
It still doesn't answer my question. In regards to the highlighted sentence above, was it a defective part? Was it attached properly? Could something have broken it (see Space Shuttle Columbia)? I understand that the analysis is still ongoing but these are questions that need to be answered, especially if we are still entertaining the idea of either continuing the NASA contract or the possibility of commercial space travel. Now, do not get me wrong, I am not questioning @drasnor 's integrity or the integrity of SpaceX, but these questions need to be answered to make sure this is a rare occurrence.
@aspieRommel, this is the preliminary result. All of that stuff you just asked about is still under investigation.
@drasnor , ok.