SpaceX sends the fifth crew and used aerodynamic tip

A four -member crew will be transported to the International Space Station (ISS), where they spend approximately 6 months and then return to the ground.Crew Dragon for this mission has already been named and contains several adjustments and improvements.

Crew-3 crew before your dragon endurance

The Crew-3 mission, as the name suggests, is the third of the sharp piloted Crew Dragon missions, within which professional astronauts are regularly transported to ISS for long-term expeditions.The commander of the Crew-3 mission is the astronaut Nasa Raja Chari, who will fly into space for the first time.The pilot is Thomas Marshburn (NASA) that has been in space twice.The first mission specialist is the German astronaut Esa Matthias Maurer, for which this flight will be the premiere.It will only be the second European to fly in the Crew Dragon.The second specialist of the Crew-3 mission is the American astronaut NASA Kayla Barron, who will also fly into space for the first time.

SpaceX will surprise for competing boeing

The original plan was that Crew Dragon of SpaceX will only carry out these regular ISS missions once a year as it was to take turns with the oldline boat boeing.Starliner, however, met a number of problems in development and testing, and thus brings his first crew to orbit at the earliest at the end of next year.And only a few months later, the sharp missions for NASA can begin.

Starliner on the Atlas rocket in the first stage disconnection

The Transport of Astronauts on the ISS will only rest for a long time on the shoulders of SpaceX, which, by the way, means that Elona Muska will run out of the initial NASA contract for six missions a lot before planned.The Crew-6 mission is currently preparing for February 2023, ie about the same time when Starliner could finally be ready for his first sharp mission.So SpaceX may be able to perform all six contracted missions before Starliner starts on his first.

It is not yet clear exactly how NASA holds another phase of contracts for the transport of its astronauts to the ISS, but the agency has currently called on all companies that want to apply for these future contracts to send it information about their possibilities, abilities and schedules.NASA is interested in both certified systems (ie Crew Dragon and Starliner) and only developed ships that could be prepared by 2027.

Dream Chaser Sierra Nevada Corporation shuttle

In addition to SpaceX and Boeing, Sierra Nevada with its shuttle Dream Chaser can be expected to show interest.It is currently developed for supplying ISS, but the company has already participated with this system in the past a selection procedure for the development of piloted ships for NASA, which eventually won SpaceX and Boeing.

New ship for crew

Let's go back to the current mission Crew-3, whose start is planned for 31.October 07:21 CET from the LC-39A ramp in Kennedy Space Center in Florida.The Falcon 9 rocket will be made up of the already used first stage B1067.2 that already has a CRS-22 supply mission.The Crew Dragon, on the other hand, will be a newly produced specimen with serial number C210, which the crew Crew-3 decided to name the endurance ("endurance").The ship is added to previous ships Endeavor and Resilience.

NASA arranged 6.October October Conference, in which representatives of the agency and SpaceX revealed several innovations.

The most interesting were the details of the modifications that have been made on the Crew Dragon based on the knowledge of the previous missions of this ship.For example, when returning from the Crew-1 mission, there was a slight damage to the braking parachute as a result of an undesirable object (“Debris Strike”).But the parachutes still worked properly.Therefore, additional cleaning has been introduced for the Crew-3 to reduce the chances of the presence of undesirable objects.Other changes include software adjustments to reduce the impact of radiation on communication, slightly improved docking procedures to reduce interference from hardware on ISS, improve computer performance while returning to the atmosphere and return to the older proposal of the drive system, as it worked better than the newer one.

Making similar changes is normal.For example, after the first Crew Dragon test mission, the heat shield and other improvements were made.NASA and SpaceX also got valuable data during the three -day inspiration4 tourist mission.For example, NASA has been given the opportunity to evaluate the functioning of a life support system during the longest crew stay in Crew Dragon.One of the findings was that there is no need to change the lithium in the carbon dioxide system so often.

In addition, Crew Dragon has shown the largest height so far, which brought new data on the influence of micrometeoroids as well.NASA further analyzes data about the functioning of the parachutes in all missions.Based on the knowledge of the inspiration4 mission, for example, the sewing on part of the parachute (Riser Sleeve) has been slightly modified.During this mission, a problem with the waste system in Crew Dragon was also discovered.Endurance ship will contain remedy, but the ship Endeavour was already at the time of this findings on the ISS.Therefore, during the November return of the Crew-2 from the ISS, the crew will limit the use of the toilet.

Replacement of the Pica-X block on the heat shield of the classic Dragon 1 cargo ship

Sarah Walker, Director of Dragon missions in SpaceX, also responded to the author's question about the reusability of the heat shield on the dragon.We have learned earlier that the CRS-22 mission has already flew the heat shield from the DM-2 mission, but the SpaceX representative has now provided more details.Explained that the shield consists of two parts-laminate shells (Backshell) and tiles of ablative Pica-X.Only the laminate part was re-used on the CRS-22 mission.However, SpaceX continues to investigate the possibility of repeated use of a heat shield.

Another interesting thing is that the Endurance ship for the Crew-3 mission is not entirely new as it contains the already used aerodynamic top.This part of the ship will be hosted after the Dragon separation from the rocket to reveal the docking port, additional nozzles of the DRACO and the position of stars positioning for navigation.Was not specified from which dragon this particular tip comes from.

Two Dragon ships in production

Crew Dragon Endurance, however, is not the last new ship to make SpaceX.There are currently two other dragons in production, one of which will be finished in spring 2022 and will fly to the next piloted Crew-4 mission.The second dragon produced is a freight variant for CRS supply missions and is also supposed to be ready at the beginning of next year.SpaceX will have a total of four Crew Dragons and three cargo dragons at the beginning of next year.

However, it is not yet clear how many other dragons plan to produce SpaceX.Each piece should be capable of at least five missions, so it is theoretically possible that there will be no other dragons in the foreseeable future, as the existing ones will be sufficient to serve all planned missions.

As for other upcoming missions of a piloted Crew Dragon, after the Crew-3 mission comes the AX-1 tourist mission.This is organized by Axiom Space and a four -member crew will visit the International Space Station for about a week.The mission is planned at the end of February 2022 and will fly through the Crew Dragon Resilience, which graduated a few weeks ago.It will be the third mission for him.

In April 2022 will be followed by a Crew-4 mission with a newly manufactured boat and four other professional astronauts who spend 6 months on the ISS.

Crew-5 and AX-2 missions are also planned in autumn 2022.The first one might be interesting in that she could first have on board a Russian astronaut.NASA is striving for an exchange system where one Russian mission would fly on every US mission and in exchange for every Russian soyuz one would fly one astronaut NASA/ESA/JAXA.

It is then easier to ensure the constant presence of at least one astronaut in the American part of the ISS even in a situation where, for example.For 2022, the Space Adventures tourist mission was originally planned to achieve Crew Dragon so far the highest orbit.However, this mission has recently been canceled as the contract with SpaceX has expired.

The article was created for the Elonx server.cz.Has been edited before the release.The original can be found here.