SpaceX has just announced that the Dragon spacecraft safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. That marks the end of the CRS-1 mission, the first of twelve official resupply missions to the International Space Station for NASA.
Launched on October 7, the Dragon spacecraft reached the International Space Station on October 10. The hatch opening was scheduled for the next day, but it’s been anticipated and it took a few hours. Perhaps because the Dragon was carrying some important supplies such as icecream. 😉
The Dragon spacecraft is designed to carry a cargo both to and from the International Space Station. Therefore, it can be used to bring back to Earth equipment that’s no longer used on the Station, usually after it fails, but also scientific experiments. Today it was one of the cases in which it delivered to Earth samples of scientific experiments that will be analyzed by various laboratories.
This mission went well, unfortunately SpaceX secondary mission, which was the launch of the prototype of the Orbcomm OG2 satellites, failed. After a few days, the satellite crashed down because its orbit was too low and the fuel was not enough to raise it to the correct orbit. Orbcomm’s engineers were still able to perform several tests of the satellite operation, which gave a positive result.
The constellation of 17 Orbcomm satellites is still scheduled to be put into orbit between 2013 and 2014, this time as a primary mission of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. For this reason, it won’t be needed to submit to the strict flight rules to the International Space Station which made it impossible to put the satellite prototype into the correct after the failure of one of the Falcon 9 rocket engines. It was a risky mission and unfortunately it went bad, the launches of the other satellites won’t have the same problems.
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The cargo returned to Earth by the Dragon spacecraft will be checked to verify that SpaceX can make a successful resupply missions to and from the International Space Station. If everything is OK, they’ll go on with the second mission when the date will be scheduled.
SpaceX is still proceeding with the design and testing of the Dragon version capable of carrying astronauts because it has a contract with NASA for that type of mission as well. According to plans, the first flight with astronauts should take place in 2015. For SpaceX that would’ be another great victory.
