SpaceX / Michael Altenhofen

Dragon C2+ finishes making history... The spacecraft safely splashed down about 560 miles off the coast of Baja California at 8:42 AM, Pacific Daylight Time today, completing a 9-day mission that involved proving that SpaceX's privately-made capsule is capable of rendezvousing and berthing with the International Space Station (ISS) without any significant problems, and delivering 1,100 pounds worth of cargo to the ISS for its 6-member crew to use. Dragon C2+ is currently on a barge heading back to the Port of Los Angeles. It will then be transported to a SpaceX facility in Texas so that 1,400 pounds of items that the ISS astronauts placed inside the vehicle prior to its departure from the station can be offloaded.


Photo courtesy of SpaceX - Twitter.com


Photo courtesy of SpaceX - Twitter.com


NASA / US Navy


Photo courtesy of SpaceX - Twitter.com

With Dragon C2+ now in the books, SpaceX is gearing up to officially deliver cargo to the ISS as part of its contract with NASA's Commercial Crew Program. The Falcon 9 first stage motor for Dragon's next flight is now at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida (see pic below). Dragon's next launch should take place before the end of this year. Let's hope it will be as smashing a success as the mission that concluded this morning.


Photo courtesy of SpaceX - Twitter.com

NASA / Jim Grossmann

Endeavour: Retirement Update... Last week, engineers inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida finished constructing the tail cone that will fly on Endeavour during her ferry trip to California in late September. The tail cone is designed to protect Endeavour's three Replica Shuttle Main Engines from air turbulence during her cross-country flight to SoCal. The Shuttle Carrier Aircraft designated as NASA 905, which brought Discovery to Virginia in mid-April and Enterprise to New York City later that month, is the jumbo jet that will fly Endeavour to Los Angeles four months from now.

In other Endeavour-related news, construction continues on the temporary hangar that will house the orbiter at the California Science Center—Endeavour's final home. The temporary hangar will be known as the Samuel Oschin Space Shuttle Endeavour Display Pavilion, while the new museum wing where the vehicle will become a permanent exhibit is going to be called the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center...in honor of the late philanthropist whose foundation donated a generous amount of money to the California Science Center earlier this month. The Center's goal is to raise around $200 million to build the Air and Space Center, and hopefully have Endeavour displayed vertically (to simulate a launch position) inside of it.


NASA / Kim Shiflett


NASA / Kim Shiflett


NASA / Jim Grossmann


NASA / Jim Grossmann

NASA TV

Photos of the Day... Posted below are high-resolution images, taken by European Space Agency astronaut André Kuipers, of the Dragon C2+ vehicle as it berthed with the International Space Station (ISS) for the very first time last Friday. Yesterday morning, ISS crew members entered the SpaceX capsule to begin unloading 1,000 pounds worth of cargo from inside the privately-made craft. The unloading operation should take around 25 hours (spread out over four days) to complete. Dragon C2+ will then depart from the ISS and head back to Earth on May 31. It will open its parachutes and splash down in the Pacific hundreds of miles off the coast of Southern California that day.


ESA / NASA


ESA / NASA


ESA / NASA


ESA / NASA


ESA / NASA

NASA TV

"Looks like we got us a Dragon by the tail." Those were the words of International Space Station (ISS) crew member Don Pettit as history was made when the Dragon C2+ vehicle berthed at the orbital outpost for the very first time earlier today. Dragon C2+ was grappled by the ISS' robotic arm at 6:56 AM, Pacific Daylight Time...prior to the privately-made spacecraft officially berthing with the station's Harmony module at 9:02 AM, PDT. The ISS crew will have a hatch-opening ceremony for Dragon C2+ tomorrow morning, and will then spend the next week unloading supplies from the capsule before it is detached from the ISS on May 31 and safely returns to Earth that same day. This is the first time that an American-made vehicle traveled to the space station since the orbiter Atlantis visited it on her last flight, STS-135, in July of 2011. SpaceX is planning to launch Dragon to the ISS again (to officially begin delivering cargo for NASA) before this year is up.


NASA TV


NASA TV


NASA TV

NASA

Snapshots of what's to come... The Dragon C2+ vehicle will arrive and berth at the International Space Station for the first time at 8:20 AM, Pacific Daylight Time, tomorrow.


NASA

NASA / Rick Wetherington, Tim Powers and Tim Terry

Dragon C2+ Lifts Off...Finally! At 12:44 AM, Pacific Daylight Time today, a Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon C2+ capsule successfully lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) in Florida. After months of launch delays, Dragon C2+ is finally headed to the International Space Station (ISS)...where Dragon will arrive this Friday, May 25th. This morning's historic moment for human spaceflight was definitely (and obviously) heralded at the SpaceX headquarters based in Hawthorne, California—with more than a thousand SpaceX employees (who stood inside a viewing area right behind the Mission Control Center) cheering and clapping enthusiastically as a projection screen showed Falcon 9 slowly but steadily rising from its pad at CCAFS' Space Launch Complex-40. The applause was even stronger once footage was shown of Dragon C2+'s twin solar arrays flawlessly deploying after the spacecraft separated from its second stage motor in Earth orbit. More applause is expected this Friday, when Dragon will be berthed to the ISS via robotic arm.


SpaceX

Should Dragon successfully berth with the ISS on May 25, it will stay at the outpost till May 31...before departing the space station and re-entering Earth's atmosphere that same day. Like the previous Dragon flight in December, 2010, this capsule will also land and be recovered in the Pacific Ocean—hundreds of miles off the coast of Southern California.


NASA / Alan Ault


SpaceX


NASA TV


SpaceX

NASA TV

Dragon C2+'s launch is scrubbed... The launch attempt for Dragon C2+ was aborted early this morning when slightly high combustion chamber pressure was detected in Engine 5 of the Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX will try to launch Dragon C2+ this Tuesday...pending data results that engineers receive following an inspection of Engine 5 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) in Florida today. Liftoff for May 22 is scheduled for 12:44 AM, Pacific Daylight Time.

Posted with this entry are photos of Falcon 9's rollout to its Space Launch Complex-40 pad at CCAFS on May 17.


NASA / Jim Grossmann


NASA / Jim Grossmann


NASA / Jim Grossmann


NASA / Jim Grossmann


NASA / Ken Thornsley

NASA / Ben Smegelsky

Atlantis: Retirement Update... While her decommissioning process continues at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the orbiter Atlantis is also taking part in an effort to speed up the development of NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) by having Main Propulsion System (MPS) components be removed from the shuttle. The MPS components will be placed in temporary storage for future use on the SLS...with items like the liquid hydrogen fuel lines being taken out of Atlantis' engine compartment (as shown in the pics posted with this entry). Atlantis' sister ship Endeavour is also being 'scavenged' for engine parts to be used on the SLS—though Endeavour will soon complete transition and retirement operations and will be just months away from being flown to Los Angeles and becoming a space artifact at the California Science Center.

Atlantis is scheduled to be towed down the road to her final home at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex between this November and February 2013.


NASA / Ben Smegelsky


NASA / Ben Smegelsky


NASA / Ben Smegelsky

NASA / Bill Ingalls

Another Successful Soyuz Launch... Yesterday evening, a Soyuz TMA-04M rocket carrying three new International Space Station (ISS) residents was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Soyuz Commander Gennady Padalka, NASA Flight Engineer Joseph Acaba and Flight Engineer Sergei Revin will arrive at the ISS late tomorrow.


NASA / Bill Ingalls

On a related note, the Soyuz recently made its way in American pop culture when the Russian vehicle was featured on last Thursday's season finale of the hit CBS TV show, The Big Bang Theory. For those of you who watch this (hilarious) sitcom, aerospace engineer Howard Wolowitz (played by Simon Helberg) was chosen by NASA to fly to the ISS after an experiment he designed was selected as a payload that would be sent to the orbital outpost. Real-life astronaut Mike Massimino, who took part in two Hubble Space Telescope servicing missions (STS-109 and STS-125, respectively), had a prominent role in this episode.


Mike Massimino

If you're a regular viewer of The Big Bang Theory, you'd appreciate how the show constantly makes references to space exploration and even features cameos of, along with actual astronauts, world-renowned figures such as Stephen Hawking in its episodes. Nice to see spaceflight and science be taken seriously in Hollywood!


Mike Massimino

Endeavour Deactivated... NASA's youngest orbiter became the last of the three retired space shuttles to be permanently silenced. The final power-down of all of Endeavour's systems took place at 6:58 AM, Pacific Daylight Time, last Friday. This milestone comes 20 years after the orbiter flew on her inaugural mission, STS-49, and almost 1 year after Endeavour launched on her final flight, STS-134.

Endeavour remains on schedule to be delivered to the California Science Center, Endeavour's final home, in Los Angeles this September.


NASA

Bigelow Aerospace

Commercial Spaceflight Update... Yesterday, SpaceX announced a partnership with Bigelow Aerospace that would involve SpaceX launching paying passengers aboard its Falcon 9/Dragon vehicles to private space stations sent into Earth orbit by Bigelow. The orbital habitats, known as BA-330, would be based on the designs of the Genesis 1 and 2 space stations...which Bigelow successfully flew into orbit in 2006 and 2007, respectively. With SpaceX providing an extra means of transportation, Bigelow now has two ways of getting tourists up to its floating outposts; the company also has an agreement with Boeing that involves its Crew Space Transportation (CST)-100 vehicle sending astronauts to BA-330 as well.


NASA / Jim Grossmann

Of course, the Dragon capsule still has more than a week to go (tentatively) to prove that it can successfully dock with a space station (the International Space Station, that is). And it will still be 2 to 3 more years before the CST-100 even launches on its first test flight. The first segment of the BA-330 habitat isn't scheduled to launch till that same time frame as well. Ordinary folks with lots of money who want to be the first ones to visit a 'space hotel' will have to remain patient.


Boeing

ATK

Images of the Day... Alliant Techsystems, or ATK, announced today that they are planning to develop a manned spacecraft that will soar into Earth orbit aboard ATK's Liberty Launch System, which was unveiled to the public late last year. ATK, which built the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) for the now-defunct space shuttle program and will provide the SRBs for NASA's Space Launch System (at least for the SLS' first couple of flights; NASA is planning to eventually replace the SRBs with more advanced solid or liquid-fueled motors for the rocket's side-mounted boosters), is aiming for 2014 to conduct the inaugural test flight of Liberty from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. ATK is targeting 2015 to conduct the first crewed flight of Liberty—while 2016 is a tentative date in which the vehicle could support manned missions for NASA and other prospective customers.


ATK


ATK