Just a day after launching to orbit, SpaceX’s new Crew Dragon capsule automatically docked to a port on the International Space Station this morning — a critical part of its current test flight. This docking maneuver is something the capsule will have to do routinely in the future, when it starts transporting astronauts to and from the ISS. The Crew Dragon has been in orbit since around 3AM ET Saturday, when it was launched into space on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Once it reached orbit, the tip of the gumdrop-shaped capsule pivoted open, exposing the capsule’s docking mechanism underneath. As the Crew Dragon approached the station on Sunday, it then used a series of lasers, sensors, and software to automatically dock this hardware to an available port on the outside of the ISS. The first @Commercial_Crew mission arrived at the space station today when the @SpaceX #CrewDragon completed soft capture on the Harmony module at 5:51am ET. #LaunchAmerica https://t.co/Bgcgac0O50 pic.twitter.com/KfNFpHxpGx — Intl. Space Station (@Space_Station) March 3, 2019 SpaceX sent the Crew Dragon to various waypoints outside of the station early Sunday morning, to test the vehicle’s docking capability. Using its onboard thrusters, the capsule periodically approached the ISS and then held its position over the course of two and a half hours. The capsule even backed away at one point to test the spacecraft’s capability of retreating in case of an emergency. Then once the Crew Dragon was about 20 meters away, the final command was sent to the capsule to dock with the ISS. And at 5:51AM ET, the vehicle attached itself onto the docking port. A series of hooks then deployed around the outside of the port to secure the capsule into place. This docking maneuver is something the capsule will have to do routinely in the future “We can confirm hard capture is complete,” Anne McClain, NASA astronaut and current ISS crew member, said once the hooks had secured the Crew Dragon. Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques, also on the ISS, added: “Congratulations once again to the huge team around the world that makes this possible.” This is a new type of process for SpaceX, which has never automatically docked a vehicle to the space station before. The company has been launching cargo Dragon capsules to the ISS since May of 2012, but all of those vehicles were berthed; a crew member on board the ISS captures the capsule with a robotic arm on the station and then moves the Dragon to an available port. Now, the new Crew Dragon has shown that it does not need this kind of extensive input from the crew to reach the ISS. “Congratulations once again to the huge team around the world that make this possible.” The docking signifies a major accomplishment for both SpaceX and NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. The Crew Dragon is one of two private US vehicles being developed to take NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station someday. Docking is a critical process needed to ensure passengers get to the station, and today’s demonstration shows that the Crew Dragon is capable of bringing astronauts safely to the ISS. With the Crew Dragon attached to the ISS, the three crew members on board the ISS will open the hatch on the capsule and go inside, greeting the smart dummy named Ripley that rode in one of the four passenger seats. They will also unpack the more than 400 pounds of cargo stowed on the Crew Dragon, as well as perform a series of tests on the vehicle in the days ahead. The goal is to see how the vehicle is handling the space environment, and if its design is safe and holding up as expected. Then on Friday, SpaceX will send the capsule back home and attempt to land the vehicle with parachutes in the Atlantic Ocean. That landing will mark the last major milestone of this test mission and bring the current flight to a conclusion. Afterward, NASA will evaluate how the Crew Dragon performed during this trip and eventually determine when to move forward with the next major test flight — one that will put two astronauts on board. For SpaceX, that crewed test is currently set for this summer, but there’s still quite a lot of work for NASA and the company to do before that flight gets off the ground.<doc-sep>"It was super exciting to see it," he said. "I know you heard the applause and all the clapping that went along with the accomplishment today and so it's just one more milestone that gets us ready for our flight coming up here."<doc-sep>This image was taken during the first drive of NASA's Perseverance rover on Mars on March 4, 2021. The team has spent the weeks since landing checking out the rover to prepare for surface operations. Why we are going to Mars Four astronauts from three countries are preparing to leave Earth this week aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, marking the third-ever crewed flight for Elon Musk's company, and the first from SpaceX to make use of a previously flown rocket booster and spacecraft. CNN's Rachel Crane reports from Cape Canaveral, Florida. NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins is helped out of the SpaceX Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft onboard the SpaceX GO Navigator recovery ship after he, NASA astronauts Shannon Walker, Victor Glover and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Soichi Noguchi, landed in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Panama City, Florida, Sunday, May 2, 2021. NASA's SpaceX Crew-1 mission was the first crew rotation flight of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket with astronauts to the International Space Station as part of the agency's Commercial Crew Program. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls) Watch SpaceX land its Mars rocket prototype for the first time WENCHANG, CHINA - APRIL 23: A Long March-5B Y2 rocket carrying the core module of China's space station, Tianhe, stands at the launching area of the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on April 23, 2021 in Wenchang, Hainan Province of China. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images) Snapshot from the first full STARFORGE simulation. Nicknamed the "Anvil of Creation," a giant molecular cloud with individual star formation and comprehensive feedback, including protostellar jets, radiation, stellar winds and core-collapse supernovae. What it's like to walk 220 miles above Earth A two-stage SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for Demo-1, the first uncrewed mission of the agency's Commercial Crew Program. Liftoff was at 2:49 a.m., March 2, 2019. The SpaceX Crew Dragon's trip to the International Space Station is designed to validate end-to-end systems and capabilities, leading to certification to fly crew. NASA has worked with SpaceX and Boeing in developing the Commercial Crew Program spacecraft to facilitate new human spaceflight systems launching from U.S. soil with the goal of safe, reliable and cost-effective access to low-Earth orbit destinations, such as the space station. (CNN Business) — SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule has been tested in a vacuum, jostled in an acoustic chamber and put through computer simulations. But there’s only one way to know for sure how a spacecraft will work: Strap it to a rocket, and let it fly. NASA hopes the Crew Dragon, and a Boeing-built capsule called Starliner, will start flying US astronauts later this year and end the United States’ years-long reliance on Russia to ferry crew to and from the International Space Station. Crew Dragon’s first test mission launched early Saturday, and a risky and crucial test came Sunday morning when the capsule docked with the International Space Station. Everything went smoothly — and a lot was riding on it. Docking with the space station put Crew Dragon in striking distance of the orbiting laboratory and the three astronauts currently on board the ISS. If the spacecraft lost control, it could have spelled disaster. Though NASA and SpaceX were confident it would go seamlessly, it was a reminder that “there’s always human life at risk,” Patrick Forrester, chief of NASA’s astronaut office at Johnson Space Center, said last week. The docking maneuver, which required down-to-the-millisecond precision, was also a first for SpaceX. The company has for years used its smaller Dragon 1 capsule to haul supplies to and from the space station, but during those missions a long robotic arm has reached out and guided the spacecraft to its port. SpaceX/NASA This rendering shows SpaceX's Crew Dragon linging up with its docking port at the ISS. Crew Dragon, however, used its on-board navigation systems to line up with its docking port and latch on — all while traveling faster than 20 times the speed of sound. Russia, which jointly operates the space station with the United States, was apprehensive about the new capsule. The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, only approved NASA and SpaceX’s docking plans on Wednesday, just two days ahead of Crew Dragon’s launch. “They wanted us to take some steps where we would protect the space station, close another hatch or two, and have the crew ready to go in the Soyuz,” said NASA’s deputy ISS manager Joel Montalbano, referring to the Soyuz crew capsule that would allow cosmonauts to make an emergency exit if things went haywire. The space agency congratulated NASA on Sunday morning after the successful docking. Roscosmos sends its sincere compliments to the colleagues from @NASA in connection with the successful trial docking of the new spacecraft pic.twitter.com/By3500eMQu — РОСКОСМОС (@roscosmos) March 3, 2019 Crew Dragon will spend five days attached to the space station. Then comes a key final test: On Friday, March 8, the capsule will bellow back through the Earth’s atmosphere, deploy parachutes and land softly in the Atlantic Ocean. The spacecraft will need to make a safe descent and hold up well during the water landing. Out of Russia’s veteran Soyuz capsule and Boeing’s forthcoming Starliner, Crew Dragon is the only capsule designed to splash down at sea rather than land on terra firma. If all goes well, NASA astronauts could board Crew Dragon as soon as this summer.<doc-sep>SpaceX‘s new crew capsule has arrived at the International Space Station, completing its second milestone in just over a day. No one was onboard the Dragon capsule that launched on Saturday on its first test flight, only a dummy. The three station astronauts had front-row seats as the vessel docked and became the first US-made, designed-for-crew spacecraft to arrive at the ISS in eight years. TV cameras on Dragon and the space station provided stunning views of one another throughout the rendezvous. If the six-day demonstration goes well, SpaceX could launch two astronauts this summer under Nasa’s commercial crew programme. Both astronauts, Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, were at SpaceX Mission Control in southern California to observe the docking. They rushed there from Florida after watching the Dragon rocket go into orbit early on Saturday from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Centre. “Just super-excited to see it,” Behnken said. “Just one more milestone that gets us ready for our flight coming up here.” SpaceX has sent plenty of cargo Dragons to the space station, but Crew Dragon is a different beast. It docked autonomously instead of relying on the station’s robot arm for berthing, which is how Behnken said it should work when he and Hurley are onboard. They may push a few buttons and will have the ability to intervene if necessary, he said. As part of Sunday’s operation, the sISS astronauts sent commands fto Dragon to retreat and move forward again before the capsule made its final approach. 01:06 SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft launches – video SpaceX employees at company headquarters in Hawthorne, California, cheered as Crew Dragon docked nearly 260 miles above the Pacific, north of New Zealand. They burst into applause again, several minutes later, when the capsule’s latches were tightly secured. The ISS astronauts offered congratulations to SpaceX as they got ready to open the hatches and collect the supplies onboard Dragon. The capsule’s lone passenger , a mannequin wearing a white SpaceX spacesuit, was also welcomed onboard. The dummy – or Smarty as SpaceX likes to call it, given all the instrumentation – is named Ripley after the lead character in the Alien films. Dragon will remain at the space station until Friday, when it undocks and aims for a splashdown in the Atlantic, a few hundred miles off the Florida coast. Like Ripley, the capsule is rigged with sensors to measure noise, vibration and stresses, and to monitor the life-support, propulsion and other critical systems throughout the flight.<doc-sep>
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Capsule Successfully Docks With ISS, Without Use Of Robotic Arm A day after its launch atop a Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX’s uncrewed Crew Dragon spacecraft has successfully docked with the International Space Station, CNN reported on Sunday. That the docking procedure went without error is not only a sigh of relief for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program—the project to replace the retired Space Shuttle that is years behind schedule—but excellent news for the three astronauts currently residing on the station. There was a chance that the Crew Dragon, which Russian space operators warned did not have a backup docking system, would fail to successfully attach to the station. As CNN noted, there was also a risk that it could damage the ISS: Though NASA and SpaceX were confident it would go seamlessly, it was a reminder that “there’s always human life at risk,” Patrick Forrester, chief of NASA’s astronaut office at Johnson Space Center, said last week. … The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, only approved NASA and SpaceX’s docking plans on Wednesday, just two days ahead of Crew Dragon’s launch. “They wanted us to take some steps where we would protect the space station, close another hatch or two, and have the crew ready to go in the Soyuz,” said NASA’s deputy ISS manager Joel Montalbano, referring to the Soyuz crew capsule that would allow cosmonauts to make an emergency exit if things went haywire. Roscosmos sends its sincere compliments to the colleagues from @NASA in connection with the successful trial docking of the new spacecraft pic.twitter.com/By3500eMQu — РОСКОСМОС (@roscosmos) March 3, 2019 This morning, I monitored the first time ever approach and automated docking of Crew #Dragon to the ISS. The dawn of a new era in human spaceflight! #daretoexplore pic.twitter.com/Vs4niNvv2T — David Saint-Jacques (@Astro_DavidS) March 3, 2019 CNN noted that the successful docking procedure was a first for SpaceX, which has already run Dragon 1 capsule cargo missions to the ISS but previously relied on the station’s robotic arm to grab that craft and manually drag it to the docking port. According to NPR, astronauts aboard the ISS were able to board the Crew Dragon around 7:07 AM time in Houston, where NASA staff were watching the event, and later returned without oxygen masks to properly inspect the craft. “It was super exciting to see it,” Bob Behnken, one of the two astronauts slated to ride in the Crew Dragon’s first crewed test later this year (possibly in July), told the BBC. “I know you heard the applause and all the clapping that went along with the accomplishment today and so it’s just one more milestone that gets us ready for our flight coming up here.” After five days at the ISS, the Crew Dragon will return to Earth on March 8 for an aquatic landing in the Atlantic Ocean. That’s the part of the uncrewed test run that concerns SpaceX CEO Elon Musk the most, the BBC wrote. “It should be fine, but that’ll be a thing to make sure it works on re-entry,” Musk said, according to the BBC. “Everything we know so far is looking positive. Unless something goes wrong I should think we’ll be flying (people) this year; this summer, hopefully.” Boeing, which is working on its own CST-100 Starliner craft for the Commercial Crew Program, has yet to launch an uncrewed test but is scheduled to do so no earlier than April. “Today’s successful launch marks a new chapter in American excellence, getting us closer to once again flying American astronauts on American rockets from American soil,” NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine wrote in a statement. “I proudly congratulate the SpaceX and NASA teams for this major milestone in our nation’s space history.” [CNN]