Yesterday’s launch of the Falcon 9 rocket to send the Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station for the CRS-2 (Cargo Resupply Service 2) mission was perfect. However, after entering into orbit, Dragon had problems that endangered its mission. Thanks to the hard work of NASA and SpaceX engineers, now it seems that the only consequence will be a delay in its arrival to the Station.
When everything seemed to go as expected, the Dragon spacecraft’s solar panels weren’t deployed. The problem didn’t concern them directly but was related to a malfunction with the thruster pods. In a press release issued later, SpaceX has identified the problem in the oxidizer tank used to ignite the propellant, although no details were given.
It’s possible that part of the oxidizer got frozen, blocking its flow and therefore preventing the activation of three of the four thrusters of the Dragon spacecraft. Of course, at the end of the mission all the necessary tests will be carried out to establish what exactly happened and find a way to prevent it from happening again.
Yesterday, only one thruster pod of the Dragon spacecraft was working properly and in the following hours SpaceX engineers worked hard to solve the problem. From the control center they can force certain operations overriding the Dragon’s automatic systems blocks but obviously they must be sent them properly. Giving the command to activate a thruster pod is relatively easy, doing it without wrecking it completely or having it explode is another matter.
Modern spacecraft are equipped with sensors and computers connected to the control center so the engineers don’t perform operations blindly but having a lot of data. Thus, yesterday, keeping their nerve, they were able to successfully activate a second thruster pod and to deploy the solar panels, allowing the Dragon spacecraft to operate their systems without draining its battery.
There was some confusion about the number of engines required to continue the mission. SpaceX stated that two are enough to maneuver but NASA stated that to give permission to approach the International Space Station at least three of them were necessary. This in order to have enough redundancy to ensure the safety in the maneuvers.
About five hours after the launch, the other two thruster pods were activated and quickly brought to full operation. At that point, the Dragon spacecraft was ready to resume its mission, even if the rendez-vous scheduled for Saturday with the International Space Station has been postponed.
Perhaps today it will be decided if Sunday there will be an attempt to dock with the Station. This will depend on the outcome of the check-up of the Dragon spacecraft’s systems. In any case, it’s a good sign because it shows that in a mission that is still complex and risky SpaceX’s engineers managed to overcome a problem that could’ve determined its failure.
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